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How Religion Arises 



A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY. 



/BY 

DUREN J. H. WARD, Ph.D., B.D. 



'^i^ 




BOSTON: 
Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street. 






COPYRIGHT, 
BY DUREN J. H. WARD, 

1888. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. Introduction. 

Chaos in Religious Opinion, 5 

Retrospect, 9 

The'Problem, 15 

The Term Religion, 17 

" One-idea-ism " in Philosophy, 21 



Chapter II. Leading Philosophical Theories. 

§ 6. Religion is of the Will, 25 

(i) The Thesis, 25 

(2) Conscience — Kant, 26 

(3) " Morality touched by Emotion " — Matthew Arnold, 30 
§ 7. Religion is of the Emotions, 3^ 

(i) The Mystics, 32 

(2) Dependence — Schleiermacher, 34 

(3) The Unorthodox Mystics, 36 

(4) Non-mystic Emotion Theories, 37 

The Feeling of Fear 37 

The Feeling of Wonder, 40 

§ 8. Religion is of Thought, 42 

(i) Rationalists, etc., 42 

(2) Belief and Faith — Jacobi, 43 

(3) Freedom and Thought — Hegel, 45 

Chapter III. Reconsideration and Conclusions. 

§ 9. Partiality and Consequent Unrest, 48 

§ 10. Will, Emotion, Thought, 5^ 

(i) Order of their Functional Precedence, 51 

(2} A Couple of Difficulties, 52 

(3) Analogies from Other Phases of Life, 55 

§11. The Root-thought of Religion, • 5^ 



Notes, 64 

Additional References, 73 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

§ I. Chaos in Religious Opinion. 

The universal and " all-absorbing " ideas of the human 
being are few. We may conclude their universality results 
from their necessity. What continues in being during ages 
has reason (in the nature of things) for being. What every- 
body does must be done. What is everywhere is exotic 
nowhere. Religion is cosmopolitan. In some form, it is at 
home in every breast. Its products are two-sided, the 
soul's experiences and the soul's expressions. Again they 
are from two causes, the internal impulse and the external 
influence. As languages grow from the linguistic tendency 
and necessity, so religions are growths from the religious at- 
titude and needs. All such ideas (language, morality, relig- 
ion) are both spontaneous and necessitated. They germi- 
nate and develop because such is the nature of life. They 
develop with this character or that because such is the 
nature of their environment. Their tendency is unconscious. 
Hence, whoever lives naturally lives religiously. Only by rea- 
soned artifice and studied doubt is he otherwise, and even this 
may become religious to him. He may find the object of 
his adoration or his ideal in a charmed bit of stone, a tree, 
a mountain, the sea, the sun, his ancestor, a noble woman, 
deified humanity, an ideal life, the Grand Lama, an anthro- 
pomorphic pantheon, or the high and holy One who inhab- 
iteth eternity. He may bow down to this or bend his knee 
to that ; but something inevitably commands his reverence, 
and draws forth whatever longings toward fuller, higher 
life he is capable of. A thinking, feeling, acting being must 



6 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

live by thinking, feeling, and acting. What is built into 
nature must be exhibited when nature is made manifest. 
Its varieties may be as numerous as its individuals, for 
these must be as varied as the circumstances under which 
they develop. Hence, the universality of religion becomes 
also an explanation of its variety. In all minor matters, 
among those who think it is quite safe to say, quot homines 
tot sententice. 

Yet how few do their own thinking ! Millions hire it done 
to suit their taste ; but in doing so they sell their birthright, 
and forfeit what they might be. "What I want is not in- 
struction, but provocation," said Emerson. What any mind 
wants is suggestion, frequent stirring up. Clear thinking is 
of all importance ; yet how little of it is done ! From ab- 
sence of this, what worlds of confusion! and confusion is 
the evil of evils. Religion, the commonest, is almost the 
least clear of our ideas. What everybody " knows " nobody 
knows. What is more an every-day affair ? Yet who can 
define it ? We all talk about Christianity much of the time ; 
yet what is Christianity 1 One runs a mortal risk of 
dethroning a man's faith by the confusion one puts him 
to in asking him to define it. One principal reason of so 
little faith is so little effort on the part of the "faithless" to 
express what they have. Better try and mistake than not 
try at all. Bacon was wise when he said, " Truth emerges 
sooner from mistake than confusion." 

Then another class seem to abound in faith, but analysis 
shows it to be only credulity. It has its basis on nothing 
firmer than unreasoned and unreasonable authority. It is 
of the sort described by the boy in Sunday-school, who, on 
being asked what faith was, replied, "It is being perfectly 
sure of a thing when you have nothing to back it up." 

To many, religion is the Church. They see it and know 
it only through the Church. What the Church does is relig- 
ious ; what is done outside the Church is secular or irrelig- 
ious. If religion is the Church, all the good it has done is 
from the Church. There is no religion elsewhere. Other 



INTRODUCTION 7 

so-called religions are "of the devil." Their people are 
worse off than they would be without them. They are a 
great hindrance to the cause of good and to the success of 
the Church. 

Others, with just as little realization of the nature of the 
religious life, and hating the Church for one or another 
reason, attribute all its evils and mistakes to religion. If 
the Church has catered to the rich and slighted the poor, 
religion is to blame. If a hierarchy in the name of religion 
has supported tyranny and opposed freedom, religion is re- 
sponsible. And so on for every abuse which irreligious, 
selfish souls in hypocritical religious garb have found oppor- 
tunity to perpetrate. But is the sunlight to blame because 
men fight in it ? Shall we condemn the night because men 
steal? Is fire bad because it burns up houses? Is water 
a curse because men get drowned in it ? Is enthusiasm an 
evil because some become fanatic? Is good bad because 
misused? Not more so is religion vile because a Church 
has discredited it. Not creeds, not theologies, not isms^ not 
religions, but religion is the substance, the essence. " Unter 
der Hiille aller Religionen liegt die Religion selbst," said 
Schiller. Not these created religion, but religion created 
these out of such material as it found to work with. 

All inquiry concerning the evolution and historical origin 
of the religious sentiment and all discussion concerning its 
psychological basis have worth only as they tend to and 
culminate in a definite understanding of its real meaning 
and content. Foundations are important only that on them 
structures may rest. Roots are valueless unless from them 
trees and fruit grow. Highways are good for nothing unless 
to be travelled over. Temples are worse than useless, 
except as shrines at which pious folk may have their souls 
inspired. Therefore, if faith, hope, love, and worship be the 
worthy factors of human life, which men have supposed, the 
broadest and deepest philosophical inquiry should make 
faith more intelligent, hope more cheerful, love more earnest, 
worship more sincere. "The end of religion is not to an- 



8 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

swer a question of ontology [merely], but to make men 
better," says Professor D'Alviella.^ Whoever shrinks from 
or opposes the most searching, impartial examination of the 
foundations of his belief betrays his own palpable lack of 
faith, and is in grave danger of laying himself open to the 
charges of formality and hypocrisy. 

In the study of religion there is something more than a 
notice of the vicissitudes and metamorphoses of each distinct 
kind. In these times of unbounded curiosity concerning 
Nature's secrets, the origin of everything under the sun — 
and above the sun — must be inquired into. Then there is 
2l progress to be observed. The conceptions of man concern- 
ing his relation to superhuman powers have vastly changed 
during the ages. Sometimes this change has been for 
growth; sometimes, perhaps, for decay. In the hypothesis 
of a natural process, tending in the race as a whole toward 
growth and higher development, all the multitudinous trans- 
formations find their best explanation. It is the business of 
the history and philosophy of religion, not only to tell the tale 
of incidents, but to show how the evolution is determined 
by the character of the nations and races, — i.e.^ causes 
mental and rational within ; and by the outside influences 
bearing on their lives, — ?>., conditions physical as to place 
and circumstances and conditions historical as to period and 
position. Moreover, the treatment of religion has for its 
task the discernment and explanation of the laws controlling 
this life, growth, and decay. " Religions are beliefs in 
action," says Fairbairn, " and the relation between belief 
and action must be discovered." 2 The history of religion 
must be conducted in a thoroughly impartial, universal, and 
scientific manner, while its philosophy must have been de- 
rived from a careful study of its history. It is the business 
of philosophy in its application to religion to deal philosoph- 
ically with the questions of its origin^ nature^ dind function ; i.e., 
to deduce and arrange these from the facts which may be 
obtained. Philosophy must leave to history and science the 

1 These figures refer to " Notes," at the end. 



INTRODUCTION 9 

collection of the facts, the data, of which it is to judge the 
result. Yet the would-be philosopher must himself have 
been a thorough student of those data, or his philosophy will 
be but a mass of metaphysical conjectures. In the matter 
of origin, philosophy must, as psychology, ransack the human 
mind to find the facts of consciousness. From these and 
the data afforded by its helpmates in science, it has the task 
of constructing the universe and arranging all within it 
harmoniously and consistently. 

§ 2. Retrospect. 

Before our century, religions received no truly scientific 
attention ; though religion (or, more accurately, theology) has 
from time immemorial been a theme of greatest interest, and 
monopolized a considerable part of man's attention. Yet we 
may only look to former times for information concerning 
religions, not for methods of treating them as a study. For 
the most part, men recognized as religion only the views and 
practices of their own nation or sect ; 3 all else was heathen- 
dom, and heathendom was wholly superstition and evil. In- 
deed, we may still further limit the time ; for what w^e mean 
by an effort to treat this problem scientifically was unknown 
till far into the present century, and even yet is confined to a 
very limited number of exponents. The expression " scien- 
tific " now embodies an ideal so high that almost without ex- 
ception works on religions written more than fifty years ago 
are worthless as expositions ; hence, from them we cannot 
hope for more than scattered facts, and even these must be 
sifted out with the utmost care. Historical collections and 
philosophical discussions there were, and many; but their atti- 
tude was always like that of a bribed jury which had its ver- 
dict ready before it had heard the case. And, even had the 
method been better and the bias less, the facts were not at 
hand from which to make up a science of the subject. It is 
since the year 1771 that the sacred writings of the Persians,4 
Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Egyptians, Assyrio-Babylonians, 



lO HOW RELIGION ARISES 

and the civilized North American Indians have become a 
subject of serious study in Europe. Within the same time, 
also, has arrived the greater part of our knowledge concern- 
ing African, Polynesian, Northern Asiatic, and other Ameri- 
can natives. Now, no definite word concerning the nature or 
essence of religion could ever be spoken without being the 
result of a comparative inquiry into the universal history and 
ethnology of religions. A comprehensive survey, and an un- 
derstanding of the developmental process, of the idea among 
mankind, are the first prerequisites to the solution of its prob- 
lems. But the facts in the field of religion are as yet little 
known. Until these facts are more fully collected and better 
understood, the ground on which we may properly philoso- 
phize or hope to draw correct inductions is extremely limited. 
Although the world has been slow to perceive it, yet in reality 
there never has been any more ground for assuming that 
religion could be understood without a study of the most pos- 
sible manifestations or specimens of it than there ever was 
for assuming we could know animal life merely by a study, 
however careful, of the animals on our farms, or the vegetable 
kingdom by a familiarity with garden products. A practical 
knowledge (in any department of life) of those species which 
happen to be most useful in our circumstances is no sufficient 
understanding of the whole subject. Nor, indeed, will any 
assertions, assumptions, or speculations about its nature, 
which we may indulge in, take the place of observation and 
facts. Men formerly believed they were attaining truth and 
making enduring sciences by what we now term exercises of 
imagination ; but under such science the world sat compara- 
tively still for ages. One century, in which the prevailing 
ideal has been an attempt to get at the actual things of nature 
and mind by going to them with broad and careful observa- 
tion, has done more for the real forwarding of human life 
than a thousand previous years of speculating and imagining 
what they must be. Reasoning without data is like sailing 
without a compass. We are left to chance and guess-work. 
Where there are no data, reasoning is only imagining at ran- 



INTRODUCTION II 

dom. Where the facts are incomplete, the conclusions will 
be of little value. Even with the most copious materials to 
draw from, we may hardly hope to avoid errors. 

Is there, then, any phase of the religious problem where we 
are justified in supposing the facts to be sufficiently known 
for legitimately undertaking the work of their examination 
and the drawing of their inferences or inductions ? To this I 
must answer, If we may take for granted that the most gen- 
eral nature of the subject is fairly well understood, we may 
then make an inquiry for the psychological origin of the 
religious tendency.s On the basis of such a presumption, be 
it great or small, the following inquiry is made. What the 
general nature of the subject is believed to be will appear in 
the course of this Introduction. 

The question as to why religion has not been so studied as 
to make the facts more abundant and the theories more tena- 
ble is a large one, and can only be touched upon here. To 
study religion as a topic of knowledge requires an intellectual 
interest which is universal. It implies a desire for more 
knowledge, instead of a self-sufficient feeling that we already 
possess the truth. It has taken the world long to learn how 
really little it knows, — in some fields longer than in others. 
So long as one remains in the attitude that men will only be 
right when they are persuaded to believe what he believes, he 
is not likely to be searching for facts. A man who thinks he 
has the truth does not waste his time looking for it. He sets 
himself at work persuading others to accept it. He feels its 
importance so much that he pities the rest of his fellow-men 
in their mental destitution and errors. It is the man who 
feels that he has not yet come into possession of it that goes 
about inquiring. Leaders in religion have generally believed 
they understood their subject perfectly, have taught their 
views dogmatically, and altogether have been too intent on 
apologetically establishing them against objectors to have a 
realizing consciousness of the importance of asking how it is 
in the realm of nature. Such a question as we are here in- 
stituting was inconceivable to the Scholastics, to whom relig- 



12 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

ion was Christianity, and Christianity was the Church ; and 
the source of all knowledge was a so-called "revelation" on 
one side and a so-called "pure reason" on the other. Theol- 
ogy everywhere, in the Oriental and Occidental worlds, has 
never gotten above the apologetic attitude. It has never 
willingly heard what an objector had to say. It has never 
said, " Come, let us together search for the facts and learn 
the truth " ; but it has ever exhorted, threatened, and con- 
demned men for not complying with its demand, " Come 
and accept the truth." 

Besides the difficulties immanent in religion as an objec- 
tive study, it contains from the side of the subject who 
studies it an obstacle peculiar to the topic ; namely, that the 
very attitude of the mind toward that which it would inquire 
into must (until a certain high degree of enlightenment con- 
cerning the external world is reached) hinder the possibility 
of its attaining to real knowledge of its object. So long as 
man, either by his own beliefs or by priestly control, is 
tabooed from examining into and exercising his reasoning 
powers in a free and unrestrained manner over any object 
whatever, so long is he in the very nature of things shut 
away from the possibility of understanding it. The influ- 
ence of the great mysterious Nature surrounding him on 
every hand has been so powerful as to keep him in great 
degree mute with fear and reverence. What he has not 
readily discovered and understood he has too often cheaply 
settled by assuming it a secret of the gods, a mystery too 
sacred to be meddled with by his profane hands. The infal- 
lible authorities with which he has in this way gradually 
bound himself have kept him for further ages in the condi- 
tion of misunderstanding. Hence arises the paradox that 
religion, from first to last the problem par excellence of 
humanity, is perhaps the least understood and the last to 
be properly approached. That hundreds and thousands of 
minds during the whole career of man on the globe have 
been devoting their most zealous energies to this religious 
side of life, and yet that not one in a thousand has ever con- 



INTRODUCTION I3 

ceived the subject in the light of the principal facts, seems 
strangely absurd. Yet this seeming absurdity has its serious 
and somewhat mitigative side. For example, the Israelite of 
olden times, filled with the thought of human responsibility 
and knowing nothing of the true character of the universe 
and of the reign of law throughout it, can hardly have been 
seriously to blame when he spoke of the material prosperities 
and adversities of the nations as so many directly interposed 
rewards and punishments from the hand of his Deity. In 
the darkness of his times, this supernatural and ethical ex- 
planation was doubtless the most rational one possible, 
although to our minds these things are seen to be the natural 
results of certain tendencies operating under favorable or 
unfavorable circumstances, and that ' moral worthiness or 
religious zeal may or may not be connected in either case. 
To use terms belonging to one of the best-known expressions 
of our age, that which is fitted to its material environment 
survives and prospers materially, that which is not so fitted 
perishes; while it may even happen that moral superiority 
may be a chief cause toward material destruction. But, to 
illustrate further, the absurdity becomes a real one when, 
under the vastly broader light of our day and with an en- 
tirely different world-outlook, men continue adopting the 
methods and words of the ancients as explanations of the 
various phases of the religious problem. 

From yet another side should be illustrated this failure of 
men to realize the fuller import of the religious nature. So 
long, for example, as the religious-minded Hindu continues 
to regard the Vedic scriptures as the infallible fountain and 
source of all that is possible and necessary to know concern- 
ing the Divine and its relations to the human, so long will he 
fail to realize the import even of what his "sacred book "^ 
contains ; while, besides, he must ever remain in ignorance 
of the increasing volume of truth outside the so necessary 
limits of the old Rishis' world. Hence, whatever amount of 
zeal and labor he may expend in efforts to solve these ever- 
pressing questions, the results can never be more to him 



14 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

than a ringing of changes on the old assumptions. I say 
to him, for it is unintentional if he gets either farther on or 
deeper down than the Vedas themselves. He is tethered to 
their outlook; and here he must remain till some outside 
force of circumstances compels doubt to enter his mind, and 
permits other ways of looking at the subject. 

By still other peoples and in many other ways can we 
bring home to ourselves the reason why men have been so 
tardy in approaching the religious problem in the manner 
and method which they would employ elsewhere. As a rule, 
religious organizations, in order to maintain an unquestioned 
domination, have been hostile to inquiry concerning the 
theme. Then, again, sectarian zeal and enthusiasm of the 
membership have forestalled their investigating, and blinded 
them against whatever truth might have been obtained from 
sources beyond their own circle. In many cases where indi- 
viduals have reacted against this organized authority and 
undertaken investigation, they have either kept essentially 
within the old assumptions, and hence made no very impor- 
tant achievements ; or their reaction has been of an aggra- 
vated character, and has led either to partiality and blindness 
against the actual truth in the old or to the extremity of 
denying within the realm of religion all validity and legiti- 
macy whatever. In not a few instances, moreover, has the 
investigation been undertaken in the interest of truth, per- 
haps uninstigated by any of the above motives ; but the 
inquirer has in great measure unconsciously invalidated his 
results by reasoning too largely on the basis of some school 
of philosophy, through which he has come to believe all 
truth is to be discovered. Whether both an impartial and 
extended treatment of this great theme may ever be exp'ected 
is yet, at least, too early to say. Of late, the question is 
beginning to be studied by a considerable number of earnest 
investigators, representing anthropological and ethnograph- 
ical stand-points. Its history, too, is being studied and ex- 
pounded in a few instances with admirable impartiality. 



introduction 1 5 

§ 3. The Problem. 

Before attempting to indicate definitely the particular part 
of the whole religious problem with which we are here to be 
especially occupied, a better understanding between reader 
and writer will be insured if the latter inserts here a chart, 
briefly explained, illustrating as far as possible the way in 
which he conceives man to be related to Nature, at the same 
time setting forth the nature and modes of man's activity. 
Of course, this is not the place for an array of the reasons 
for such an analysis. There is not room in a brief introduc- 
tion to a short essay for inserting a work on anthropology. 
It must suffice here to say, though it is not known to con- 
form to the views of any special scho'ol, it is believed to 
recognize the facts usually agreed upon ; and, though it be 
not sanctioned in what may be peculiarly its author's, it is 
hoped that it may prove of some suggestive importance, or 
at least will make clearer certain relationships which must 
be kept in mind throughout the reading of what follows. 
(See Table L, also Note 6.) 

We now perceive the relation of the whole subject to other 
subjects. Our special problem must next be farther defined 
by a division of the topic within itself. It has its subjective 
and objective sides ', i.e., religion may be considered from the 
side of man, who worships, and that of the gods, who are 
worshipped. Considered with reference to the subject, there 
are two principal inquiries to make, — the one relating to the 
origin or most fundamental characteristic of the religious 
sentiment, idea, or experience, its source and basis in the 
human mind ; the other an endeavor to determine its content 
and nature to the fullest extent. The ground requisites for 
undertaking these have already been alluded to. (Note 5. 
See also Note 7.) Over against this is the objective prob- 
lem, in which the inquiry is directed toward the reality and 
character of that to which the mind turns or to which it 
addresses itself in its religious attitude, passive and active ; 
and likewise a treatment of the conduct of the subject incident 



1 6 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

upon or growing out of such a relationship. But such an 
exposition as is implied in these few words would cover an 
immense space, and would require a greater acquaintance 
with facts than is perhaps yet in the possession of any single 
person. 

(i) The theme origin calls for an analysis of the facts of 
consciousness and a determination of their priority of rela- 
tionship in the religious experience. It is a search for the 
root function and the security of its implantation in human 
nature. 

(2) Then, as to the content and essence of this religious side 
of life, nothing short of a philosophical sifting of its mani- 
fold manifestations can discern the elements essential to its 
fullest expression. Mere introspection and speculation over 
that which makes up the thinker's own religion tell little for 
the subject as a whole. The appeal must be made to history 
and to racial manifestations on no narrow scale. Till such 
can be done, no theory is safe on this most important of all 
features of the question. 7 

(3) On the objective side, the investigation regarding the 
reality afid character of that to which mind is addressed in re- 
ligion necessitates the broadest possible scientifically attested 
knowledge of nature. The metaphysical assumptions and 
speculations, and the appeals to books of authority, both so 
largely the methods of the past, furnish far too slender a 
basis for the religious mind of the present. Even men of 
very little privilege as to communication with the literature 
of the times, but who possess some vitality of thought, are 
finding it impossible to maintain their allegiance to the 
former standards, as whoever will may learn if he but take 
the pains to feel this part of the public pulse. While for the 
wide-reading, thinking, philosophic, and scientific class, those 
methods are already antedated, only they do not know their 
strength and have not yet taken any means toward exercis- 
ing an organized religious influence. 

(4) And, finally, a portion of the theme, in many respects 
no less difiicult, is that which pertains to the conduct of the 



INTRODUCTION 1 7 

subject^ the proper deportment of a religious life. This is 
what may be termed the practical side. It includes the ques- 
tion of cultus, together with the question of whether religion 
implies public or social relationships, and, if so, what they are. 
In this latter phase, the discussion comes upon the moral 
domain ; religion and ethics touch, and (if our answer be a 
positive one) must to a considerable extent thenceforward 
blend. There can be no question as to the fact that, in the 
past, religions have possessed a very practical or active char- 
acter, though far from being always normal and healthful in 
their effects. Beliefs have led to actions, — actions, indeed, 
of the most diverse types. Sometimes this has been the 
sincerest worship, sometimes the merest liturgical formalism ; 
sometimes we see the subject expending his very life in the 
freest and most unselfish acts of sacrifice for his fellows, 
sometimes the most arbitrar}^ bigotry and utter disregard of 
others is uppermost ; sometimes it is propagated in the spirit 
of charity, liberty, respect for individuality, sometimes dog- 
matic assertion and the demands of unconditional submission 
to the powers which happen to be in the ascendency crowd 
out all else. (See Table II.) 

These, then, are some out of many functions of the same 
consciousness. The one self has many faculties, powers, at- 
titudes, activities. It applies itself to reality in many ways. 
Our business here is to make an inquiry as to where and 
how one of these many conscious activities arises ; in other 
words, we are here to seek for an answer to the question 
first in order of sequence and foundation under the topic 
Religion. 

§ 4. The Term Religion. 

To another time and place must be left the tracing of the 
etymological origin and historical career of the term religion. 
However, a few remarks should here be added. All words 
have their history. All have gone through changes greater 
or less, and especially interesting is the history of so great 



i8 



HOW RELIGION ARISES 



Analytic Table II. 





H 




U 




^ 




H 




t— ( 




U 




C/2 




U 




1— H 




ffi 


;zi 


Ph 


O 


O 


(— 1 


m 


o 


< O 


1— ( 


< ^ 


t^ 


hH 


w 


w 


p4 


PM 




Ph 




o 




:^ 




w 




K-3 




pq 




O 




P^ 




Ph 



Subjective Side. \ 



Objective Side. < 



Psychological Origin. 
The inquiry after the germ, 
root, fundamental charac- 
teristic, basis in human nat- 
ure. 



Psychological C o n- 
TENT AND ESSENCE. Con- 
tent and nature of the idea 
in its most ideal develop- 
ment, such an ideal being 
the outcome of the widest 
possible historico-ethnical 
study of such expressions 
of religion as are accessible. 



Theism. The reality and 
character of that to which 
mind addresses itself in the 
highest religious attitude. 
Demands the widest and 
most thorough knowledge 
of nature. 



CuLTUS. The proper and 
justifiable conduct of the 
religious subject toward the 
object and ground of his 
devotion and trust, and the 
social relationships implied 
(if any). 



INTRODUCTION I9 

a term as this one. Words do not and cannot mean the 
same from age to age. Our concept of religion is not the 
same as that of those who used the term in former centuries. 
Nor, aside from the term, is our notion of the thing in itself 
the same as that of the old Greek, Roman, Jew, or Hindu, 
who held to the substance as firmly as we. It is doubtful if 
a term exists in any of the languages of the past which would 
render such an idea as this word conveys to us. History is 
a movement; and language is a growth which takes place 
apace with the growth of thought in that movement, and 
which develops out of the ever-changing needs of the race in 
its career. Hence, we must use words with this in mind, as 
much as possible in the sense which they bear at the time of 
their use, and not in their etymological' or several historical 
senses ; though the study of these is of inestimable value to 
their proper understanding. Again, if we would do justice 
to others, we must not use words in a narrow and partial 
sense and under the assumption that such use comprehends 
their whole significance and import. It would not be diffi- 
cult to cite works, even in these late days, where this subject 
is treated as though fear, hope, the sense of mystery, moral- 
ity, mere ceremony, or ecstasy, is one or another regarded 
and spoken of as the sum and substance of religion. It may 
be that with this or that individual or people one or another 
of these characteristics quite fully describes it, while in other 
cases they may be the most inadequate designations. It has 
at various times comprehended one or another of these, and 
yet other elements. But who has the right to say that now 
or at any other time it consists solely and essentially of one, 
of two, or of several of these elements together? By what 
sufiicient authorit}^ shall any one deny the application of the 
term to the Papuan clasping his hands over his forehead as 
he squats before his karwar and asks himself whether what 
he is going to do is right or wrong, even though he may have 
no word for religion ? If, on the banks of the Ganges, devo- 
tion occasionally leads the Hindu mother to throw her babe 
into the gaping mouth of the crocodile ; if, in the Fiji Isl- 



20 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

ands, a pious but old and feeble woman devotedly goes to her 
grave and unmurmuringly permits a stalwart son to perform 
his last dutiful act by ending her life with his war club ; or 
if, in Europe or America, filial sons and daughters minister 
tenderly to the helplessness of age, and society even main- 
tains institutions for the education and comfort of idiots, 
shall we decide that here is religion and there not ? and, if 
we do, on what principle ? When we read the views of those 
two great thinkers, nearly contemporaries, Buddha of India 
and Thales of Greece, the former ridiculing the notion of 
the existence of gods or demons at all, while the latter 
seriously afhrmed that all things were full of the gods (the 
former becoming the founder of the chief religion of the 
world numerically, and the latter the "father of philosophy"), 
what have we to say about excluding either from the pale of 
religion ? Or, to take a final illustration, how shall we affirm 
or deny this appellation to the devoted orthodox Catholic or 
Protestant who accepts his creed literally, holds his concep- 
tions of religious things anthropomorphically, and faithfully 
crosses himself, attends masses, submits to every ceremony 
and rite, and regularly and believingly reads, repeats, or ex- 
temporizes his prayers, and not at the same time admit or 
refuse the like title to the reflecting and self-denying philan- 
thropist, philosopher, or scientist who holds to no fast creed, 
declines to accept any anthropomorphic religious tenets, be- 
lieves in no ceremonies before the mystery of nature, stakes 
his confidence in the reign of law throughout the universe, 
draws the lessons of human progress and higher possibility 
from the world's past, and deliberately and enthusiastically 
devotes himself to hasten on to those higher plains ? Evi- 
dently, to discover the origin and discern the essential feat- 
ures of such a factor as this is no easy task. To the majority 
of common unphilosophical minds, the question takes one of 
the two seeming alternatives, — either religion is definitely 
and dogmatically asserted to subsist in the view held by " me 
and my sect," or it is eschewed as an inextricable confu- 
sion, the vanity of vanities, and really a great nuisance from 



INTRODUCTION 21 

which humanity must rid itself. Philosophers, as a class, 
have not been satisfied to give the matter up in these light 
or hopeless ways. They have generally solved the problem 
to their own satisfaction by fixing upon some prominent con- 
stituent element and developing what they supposed to be 
a conclusive argument that, in their discovery, would be 
found the germ and substance of religion. The various 
partial methods by which the thinkers have disposed of it 
will be touched upon in the next section. 

§ 5. " One-idea-ism " in Philosophy. 

During the last two decades, it has been possible, for those 
who could afford the effort, to live in a new intellectual 
world. It is now within the reach of millions. A new con- 
ception of the universe and of man's place in it is gradually 
becoming popular. With this new cosmos as standing- 
ground, mind is already beholding other changes of indefi- 
nitely far-reaching character. Many wholly new sciences 
have been built up, and new methods have been applied in 
old fields. A marvellously wide-spread openness and readi- 
ness for investigation are observable in many ways. Probably 
never before has the religious mind of Christendom been so 
susceptible to philosophical manipulation as now. And, as if 
conscious of its opportunity and wise in its method, philos- 
ophy is hastening with the improved methods of psychology 
to discover the truth and test the reality in the religious 
sentiment. Not more busy, however, is psychology in this 
than in numerous other ways. Within quite recent times 
the scope of this branch of philosophical science has broad- 
ened much. Its encroachment on the fields of Philology, 
Ethics, and Theology has been very considerable. In the 
two latter, the whole question of origin has been boldly 
taken from the protection of authoritative statement, and 
treated with searching analysis now by one and now by the 
other of the two schools of opposed philosophical propen- 
sities. Now, nothing is plainer than that one's philosophy 



22 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

largely determines one's result. If the one is partial, so too 
is the other. If the method adopted is exclusively empirical, 
one answer will be given ; if exclusively transcendental, quite 
another. In general, it is the policy of empirical philosophy 
to regard religion as a transitory instinct or an illusory stage 
in human development. Spiritualistic, idealistic, or tran- 
scendental philosophy has proved a much better helpmate. 
Its dogmas have been an encouragement and inspiration all. 
the way. Religion thrives best under this sort of rule, be- 
cause one of its most indispensable elements is spiritual 
elevation. Empiricism has generally been " of the earth 
earthy," and earthly things of such form have proven baneful 
to most former notions of religion. On the other hand, the 
transcendental tendency has endeavored to develop souls 
independent of bodies. Is philosophy too materialistically 
inclined, it sinks man into the mire of sensualism. Is it of 
a too ethereal frame, it keeps him in the skies of fancy and 
abstraction. He only really lives when on the solid ground 
of a thoughtful experience. 

On still another phase we find the thinkers falling into 
differences. The world is wide, but enthusiasts think it 
narrow. Interest and delight in one feature shut their eyes 
to others. Is one an empiricist or idealist, as before men- 
tioned, he may narrow his theory of religion still more by 
laying all stress on one or another of the primary mental 
faculties, or even on a single subdivision of one of these. 
(a) There is a class who see religion only through con- 
science : consequently, action, conduct, morality, some instiga- 
tion of the will, seem to them a sufficient account of its origin, 
foundation, and essence, (b) A second party, filled with 
sympathy, find nothing which they could name religious out- 
side of feeling : hence, to them it is a sentiment first and last. 
It has its spring in the depths of feeling. It is one of, or a 
function of, the sensibilities. In its purity or (if a transitory 
view is held) in its erroneousness, it is a feeling and no more. 
(c) Then come those who dwell in realms of thought alone, 
and who in turn would monopolize religion for their ends. 



INTRODUCTION 23 

It is a matter of intellect, and therefore all religion begins 
and ends in thought. Whatsoever is more than this cometh 
of evil. All besides pure, unadulterated thought is extraneous 
and corrupting. (^) Besides these main tendencies, there are 
multitudes who have espoused some one idea ranging under 
the individual faculties. Sometimes this is taken from one, 
sometimes from another ; now it is treated by the method of 
this philosophy, now by the method of that. It is one of the 
curious ways in which nature is adapted to the mind that, 
when viewed with interest and feeling, an object may in- 
crease or diminish almost without limit. The perspective 
changes till a mite may hide a world or a world may seem 
a mite. Through a single trait of character, a partisan may 
easily see the throngs of earth moulded into races, nations, 
societies, or political, educational, and religious parties. So 
great is truth and so small is man that a single idea clearly 
seen seems a sufficient basis for all things, (e) To these may 
be added a final class, who will not admit for religion any 
legitimate place. It is purely superstitious in origin and 
nature. Its present assumptions are beneath the contempt 
of thinking men. It is a thing of the past. It was a freak 
of the youthful world ; and, as a study in natural history, it 
has the same interest which any decayed institution would 
have. There attaches to it a sort of archaeological impor- 
tance, and its relics look well in museums and as ruins. 
These are the sceptics who have passed over the stream of 
doubt to the further bank of negative dogma. 

Each of these several methods has its great advocates in 
both experimental and idealistic philosophy. Each of the 
first four has its champions in theology. Each and all have 
their enemies. If we wish to know where this great factor 
originates and what it really is, we must not take as final the 
answer of the advocates of any exclusive theory, nor the 
testimony of " retained counsel " for or against the cause. 
Only impartial Nature is ultimately trustworthy. In religion, 
as in other features, she has her many phases, all of which 
are finally to be seen as one great whole, to be unified. 



24 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

Light from any source and on every side we must heartily 
welcome. Nor have we much trust in reality, if we do not 
expect that every expression of the religious life, every claim 
made for or against it, has some basis, and may, rightly used, 
be of some advantage toward its completer understanding 
and realization. 



CHAPTER II. 

LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES. 

§ 6. Religion is of the Will. 

(i) The Thesis. — In one or other of its forms, the 
view that religion is of the Will ^ finds many supporters in 
our age ; and, in the wide differences which distinguish them 
as classes, we have illustration of the scope of life that may- 
fall chiefly under the control of a single faculty or phase of 
our being. Strange though it seem at first, the moving, 
potent, prominent principle which underlies the religious 
life of the punctilious ritualistic churchman and that of the 
enthusiastic ethical agnostic has the same spring; namely, 
that religion is once and always a life of action, of work. 
In periods specially given over to the practical, this view, in 
one of its phases, exercises predominating influence. Those 
so-called " matter-of-fact " and " scientifically " inclined per- 
sons are in general drawn in this direction. Here, too, is to 
be found the root of the " Ethical Culture " movements of 
to-day. The leaders have by some means become blind in 
those eyes of the soul which look out upon existence in other 
ways ; and, consequently, the whole pent up force of their 
earnest lives must find its outlet here. 

In its other phase, this view is the principle which rules in 
those impractical times when the observance of forms claims 
man's chief attention. We observe, then, the ritualistic, 
ceremonial, or ecclesiastical proclivity, which seems the very 
antipode of the former, and, indeed, is such in practical 
aspects. They are each other's most deadly enemy, while 
at the same time they grow psychologically from one root. 
Like all other great moving propensities, they both have 



26 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

their basis of fact, their legitimate birth and being ; and, like 
every partial and exclusive theory, they achieve great ends 
at great sacrifice in other ways. The position that religion 
is chiefly a matter of ritual, liturgy, ceremony, etc., has few 
or no supporters in theory, though practically acted upon by 
millions, among multitudes of whom there is probably little, 
if any, real spiritual perception. The rites of the religious 
institution into whose membership they were born and 
reared, and the social opportunity which this method of 
meeting their fellows affords, are to them the substance of 
the religious life. The view which makes it in origin and 
essence a matter of morality is more profound, and has its 
open and able advocates. For this reason, it is proper that 
its soundness should receive some special attention, while 
the other may be passed without further notice. 

It is noteworthy that the first three views mentioned — 
namely, that religion is of the will, of feeling, and of thought 
— had each its able representative in German philosophy at 
the close of the last century and the beginning of the pres- 
ent. In the works of Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel, we 
have the masterly development of each. Representative 
types of each conviction could no doubt be cited in every 
active age. In the primitive Christian Church, we find 
James the man of works, John the advocate of love, and 
Paul the preacher of belief or reasoned theory, — the Kant- 
ian, the Schleiermacherian, and the Hegelian. Although 
various other views will be considered, yet the chronological 
order in the treatment of the subject by the great German 
thinkers determines for the most part the order here adopted. 

(2) Conscience — Kant. — The view that relates relig- 
ion inseparably with the foundation of the moral nature has 
its chief philosophical exposition and defence in the work 
of Kant. One may fairly say that he was the first to make 
religion a subject of serious psychological inquiry. With 
him the moral sense becomes the foundation of religion, and 
the religious foundation in turn becomes the support of the 



LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 27 

conscience. Kant could fix neither without the other. Re- 
ligion is duty apprehended as divine command. 9 Duty is 
acting under the behest of the " Categorical Imperative." 
The nature of this command is such that no external consid- 
erations are to be taken into account. Its dignity, inde- 
pendence, and sublimity greatly impressed the mind of Kant. 
His most eloquent strains are poured out over it. " Duty ! 
thou sublime and mighty name that dost embrace nothing 
charming or insinuating, but requirest submission, and yet 
seekest not to move the will by threatening aught that would 
arouse natural aversion or terror, but merely holds forth a 
law, . . . what origin is worthy of thee, and where is to be 
found the root of thy noble descent ? " ^° In true lYiorality, 
he positively rules out all considerations of gain at the time 
the will is giving itself the command. In answer to the 
question, " What ought I to do ? " Kant would say, " Do 
that which shall make you worthy of being happy." " Does 
this mean that happiness is to be my object ? " "No," says 
he, "respect for the moral law, morality, worthiness, should 
be your object : happiness shall be a result. Happiness 
comes not from seeking. Seeking it is unworthy, and results 
in unhappiness." "But, if by means of my conduct I am 
made worthy of being happy, shall I attain the happiness 
which I deserve? In other words, what may I hope?" 
The reply is that theoretically and practically Reason pre- 
supposes that worthiness shall have its reward. The two 
are inseparably connected in the Pure Reason. Experience 
makes it evident, however, that happiness is not in proper 
ratio with worthiness in this world, and therefore there is 
another. Unless, also, there is a wise author and governor, 
harmony between morality (or worthiness) and happiness 
cannot be required. Kant thus finds God and future life 
presupposed in moral obligation. It will be perceived that 
he does not make morality obligatory because it is a divine 
command, or because it has divine command behind it ; but 
he finds it to be a divine command because it is subjectively 
obligatory, — />., because we are directly conscious of duty 



28 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

as such. Nor does he deduce morality from the existence of 
God, but he deduces God from the existence of the moral 
law. He cannot, struggle as he may, rid himself of the old 
notion that happiness is somehow the end of life, and, if we 
cannot get it here, we must get it in some other good time 
and place. It will not do to seek it, because in that way 
you miss it. This is the curious paradox which it presents. 
If you seek it, it eludes you. It would seem, then, as if we 
can only be happy if we don't know it j and, if we don't know 
it, what is the use of it .? 

I am inclined to think that Kant is persuading us to look 
upon religion as a kind of poor morality. To apprehend 
duty as a divine command is to assume it from motives of 
fear or gain. The recognition of any outward divine author- 
ity as the basis or instigation of moral action is an appeal 
to human selfishness and weakness. This is but an outward 
phenomenal support, which must sooner or later fall away. 
Every established religion begins in these external statutory 
moral laws apprehended as divine commands, but must go 
on to higher ground ; namely, to a conception of duty inde- 
pendent of them, apprehended as binding from within." To 
speak without deviation : religion is an earlier and lower 
form of morality, has only a practical validity, and is a sort 
of unavoidable stage on the way to the grand conception of 
duty before mentioned. The true morality is above this, 
for it forbids such acts entirely. The only third way possi- 
ble would be to apprehend duty as a divine command based 
on love toward the Divine Being instead of on fear of the 
divine displeasure. But Kantian Pure Reason has belittled, 
if not entirely annihilated, our previous Divine Being, and 
has brought no new and lovable God to take the former's 
place. Morality is of such sublime importance that it has 
taken up the sympathies of the great Professor, and the 
adoration and devotion which we had thought to go to God 
has been paid to the law of God.^^ 

The fact in the case is, we can hardly get a full and fair 
answer as to the basis and nature of religion from Kant, 



LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 29 

because he is so taken up with other matters. The critique 
of knowledge and the foundation of morality engross his 
chief attention. Religion as a factor of history, as an 
essence in human nature having an origin as profound as 
that of the sublime moral lav/, never roused his interest. 
What work he did in the field of theology was of a negative 
character. He shook the religious confidence of men by 
his ironical attacks on the arguments for the being of God ; 
and, when we have mentioned his work as a destroyer, we 
have said about all that is possible. There was really noth- 
ing but morality left out of which to get what religious 
comfort one could. It was for later hands to rear another 
structure. He claimed to be also a reconstructor ; but in 
religion "iconoclast " will best describe him. His reconstruc- 
tive work was in the field of philosophy. His labor in bring- 
ing order into the existing laws of the human mind was on 
the positive side. But his efforts at a theological reconstruc- 
tion were not a success from a philosophical point of view. 
His profession of finding out God on the new and higher 
basis of the Practical Reason is open to quite as serious 
objections as those he raised against other methods. From 
the point of view of ethics, his is one of the best efforts of 
philosophy. But as theology, the rationalist might reply, 
such a notion of freedom as Kant found in the autonomy of 
the will is just as much a mere idea as is the notion of God 
which he condemns. If the latter is a dream, an illusion, a 
wish, what assurance is there that this great sense of human 
responsibility is more ? Such an appeal as Kant makes to 
the feeling of the heart does not prove his point. Proof 
pertains to reason. Kant, in the " Critique of Pure Reason," 
makes cause and effect a mere form of thought, one of the 
categories. But how much more is this so than is our idea 
of freedom a form of human feeling or human impulse .? In 
what consists the superior validity of the latter as a proof 
for the being of God ? Is it possible for one faculty of mind 
to set itself up as more trustworthy than another ? Who is 
to be the judge ? How can we know or show that con- 



30 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

sciousness points with more distinctness to our feeling of 
moral responsibility than to our intellectual demand for a 
cause of the world about us ? What makes one a form and 
the other something better ? No : if one is mere form, the 
other is not more. Then we have left the uncomfortable 
alternative of believing that there is reality nowhere, — not 
even in this belief, — and theology is negated. It has taken 
the longest and most active life of thought to impeach 
thought. It shall again prove its candor and veracity. It 
shall, as of old, take its seat on the throne. 

(3) "Morality touched by Emotion." — Matthew 
Arnold. — A theory of religion based also on the moral 
nature, but of vastly greater active power, is that of Matthew 
Arnold. Religion is " morality touched by emotion." The 
origin of morality, then, explains the origin of religion. But, 
as a morality with any meaning always has its origin in the 
freedom and self-determination of the will, so religion is 
traced back to this primary faculty as its fountain-head. But 
it is touched by emotion : morality alone is, therefore, incom- 
plete to constitute religion. Whether this emotion may di- 
rect the moral conduct as in the sight of God, or humanity, 
or both, or neither, we are not instructed. From his general 
teaching, we may infer that moral relations conducted with 
enthusiasm in the presence of one's august self would com- 
pose the substance of a religious life. 

But this morality, — even in the event that it proved to be 
the real nature of religion, — what is it at bottom but the con- 
scious knowledge of relations, these supplemented by states 
of feeling of oughtness in some direction, these again stimu- 
lating volition, which, when commended by further thought, 
leads at once to action ? It is the explicit life of what existed 
first as thought. Instead of will being first in point of se- 
quence, it is last. It is but a superficial foundation for this 
heaven-towering temple to rest it on conduct apprehended as 
divine command or on duty performed with gushing feeling. 
In those moments of life when conduct may be powerless and 



LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 3 1 

the emotions which flood the life of duty have been wiped 
out by circumstances beyond our control, the soul's life of 
religion may be most vividly realized. A man shut up in 
prison, a person helpless and in extreme danger, a martyr 
bound and awaiting his fate, the emaciated and dying, — can 
these not know religion ? Is it original in, or does it depend 
on, the power of action or emotion ? Not but what these, in 
their opportunity, have their place and are mighty — even the 
mightiest — factors of religion: only religion must not be im- 
propriated by the health and flush of life. Even the soul that 
hath not enough physical basis of life to move a hand or feel 
the play of an emotion may contemplate, and in this self- 
forgetful and powerless state may realize, the perfect end of 
the highest religious life, — its oneness with the Divine. It 
may be readily perceived and admitted that the performance 
of life's proper services with a heart is a much higher condi- 
tion than the same performance in dry, emotionless frigidity 
of nature from some sense of necessity. It has become a 
world-wide saying, that, " if I bestow all my goods to feed the 
poor, and if I [in Stoical fortitude] give my body to be burned, 
but have not love, it profiteth me nothing." So needful for 
social well-being has been the inculcation of this virtue, and 
so much has it been emphasized, that multitudes believe it to 
be the whole of religion. Against such exclusiveness all that 
was said in a former section concerning the partial in philoso- 
phizing will apply with equal weight here. And what is this 
love ? Whence sprang it ? Certainly, from the same source 
as morality, — from thought in its incipiency, the early self- 
consciousness, before specialization, emotion, and volition 
began. 

And, finally, it must be noticed that from another point of 
view, — namely, that of observed fact, — it is the gravest error 
to identify religion with, or place its origin in, morality ; for 
some of the most immoral and unmoral peoples have been 
extremely religious. It is known to all students of religions 
that only at comparatively high stages of development does 
religion receive a moral content and begin to exert an actual 



32 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

influence on the moral life. That point, whenever it arrives, 
marks an epoch of the utmost importance in the religious 
history of a people, though it by no means marks the begin- 
ning of their religious career. 

§ 7. Religion is of the Emotions. 

(i) The Mystics. — The class which naturally attracts 
attention next includes those religious souls termed Mystics, 
though these do not by any means compose the whole group 
who found religion in feeling. Mysticism is a term covering 
mental tendencies of great variety. So great is this variety 
and of such nature is its essence that definition is next to 
impossible. The notion common to all its expressions is that 
of " a supreme, all-pervading, and indwelling power, in whom 
all things are one." Through the sublime heights of feeling 
the soul hopes to grasp the ultimate reality of things, the 
divine essence, and by this attainment enjoy the unspeakable 
blessedness of actual communion with the Source of all spirit. 
The side of the unity of all is emphasized at the expense of 
that of the diversity. In many of its phases the office of the 
Understanding is set aside, and a faculty claimed to be higher 
than Reason, one which is blind to division, takes all control. 
God is lost as object; he becomes experience. All that hin- 
ders this is distracting impediment. Subject and object must 
be seen as one. In its ancient forms, this elation of spirit at 
times took place in mystical swoons, ecstasies, and trances. 
In modern times, the advancement of knowledge has greatly 
abated its extravagances, although much of it is still preva- 
lent among certain low orders of emotional religion. 

Mysticism is pantheism, but it is much more. Mere pan- 
theism is death : the better mysticism is life. Materialistic 
pantheism is degrading: mysticism is inspiring and elevat- 
ing. Pantheism sees nothing but perfection everywhere, be- 
cause divinity is everywhere : the better mysticism feels the 
sense of sin, imperfection, and alienation from the Divine, 
with which it longs to be one. Yet it differs from the gen- 



LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 33 

eral course of religion in the intensity with whicii it erapha- 
sizes and realizes the divine factor of the relationship. To 
such an extent does this proceed in mysticism that the per- 
sonality and incompleteness of the individual become lost 
in the absolute completeness of the Divine ; and this, too, 
though the effort for unity takes its rise in the sense of indi- 
vidual need and incompleteness, so that in its extreme form 
all relations are illusory, except that of unity with God. In 
general, this view of religion does not look outward toward 
a life of activity among men. It is well-nigh the opposite 
of that described in § 6. The mind tends to retire from 
the confused, jostling, busy, wicked world, and devoutly com- 
mune with its God and contemplate his nature. While the 
former class tends to the development of vigorous, indepen- 
dent, purely practical individuals, this one tends to generate 
passivity and sensitivity of character. What is the strength 
of the one is the weakness of the other. 

It is clear that, from its very nature, this general view of 
religion cannot develop theologies. Such intense contem- 
plation or feeling does not analyze, systematize, nor form- 
ulate. Mysticism has had many " preachers," but few " the- 
ologians " ; and these few, to the extent that they are 
theologians, are inconsistent mystics. A purely emotional^s 
religion has no right to a theology. Its premises and prov- 
ince are transcended as soon as it begins to define and sys- 
tematize. Mysticism is the recoil of devoutness from for- 
mality, dogmatism, ecclesiasticism, scholasticism, etc. It is 
in all religions one of the necessary reactions from ceremo- 
nialism and over-exact statements of faith. Judaism had its 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and Jesus. Christianity 
has provoked into being its Augustine, Eckhart, Thomas h 
Kempis, Bohme, Fenelon, Swedenborg, Wesley, and Fox. If 
not mystics in the full sense of the term, these, one and all, 
exhibited strong mystical tendencies in reaction against the 
prevalent dogmatism and hollowness of their times. And 
not individuals only, but each religion has its whole sects of 
mystics. Jewish Essenes, Greek Neo-Platonists, Christian 



34 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

Moravians and Quakers, ancient Hindu Brahmans, Chinese 
Taoists, etc., in the early fresh stages of their history, are 
each reactionary witnesses of this tendency striving to assert 
its just and natural influence. 

(2) Dependence — Schleiermacher. — Among moderns, 
the great master thinker and expounder of religion as a feel- 
ing is Friedrich Schleiermacher. In giving his view, it is not 
implied that others of the same general tendency would sub- 
scribe to it ; for, though with all of the class religion is a so- 
called intuitive and unreasoned feeling, yet they have the 
inconsistency of differing as widely in other particulars of 
how and what as those do who openly profess to reason. 
The view of Schleiermacher has the advantage for purposes 
of comparison of being most thoroughly insisted upon and 
most definitely expounded. The treatment which religion 
received at his hands produced what may properly be called 
an epoch in Christian theology. His enthusiasm over the 
notion of religion as feeling led him, in his early statements, 
into the extravagance of claiming that all feeling, except that 
which is morbid, is religious. ^4 Kant's results had driven 
thinkers to curious straits. Since nothing could be abso- 
lutely known, some doubted everything and became sceptics 
on all subjects. Others said : The intellect will do very well 
in its place, but its place is not in the field of religion. Here 
feeling is the all in all. Of this class was Schleiermacher. 
In his later work, " Christiiche Glaube," he held the source 
and essence of religion to be in an unreasoned sense of ab- 
solute dependence on something which sustains and deter- 
mines us, but which we cannot know. It may be termed the 
sense of the universe, the feeling which one has before the 
process of analysis begins. This sense of the infinite is 
the sense of God. If the intellect is limited, this matters 
not for religion. It is not relevant here in any way. The 
authority of faith based on feeling is all-sufficient. Only the 
heart is reliable. A man may be religious without any in- 
tellectual statement. Nor has the will anything to do with 



LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 35 

it. It prompts to no course of conduct. Religion is not to 
blame for men's misdeeds. It neither urges nor hinders 
activity. When one fully realizes it, then does he have an 
exalted peace. With this feeling, man sees that it is not 
himself alone that works. "None of us liveth to himself 
alone." "Whether we live therefore, or die, we are the 
Lord's." And, as with us, so it is with all that is about us : 
everything is dependent, absolutely so. 

This feeling so described not only involves religion, but it 
is religion. It very evidently expresses one actual feature of 
the common notions of religion ; namely, that of humility, 
self-surrender, the destruction of all feeling of pride, the 
utter incompleteness and insufficiency of. the finite. More- 
over, it is one instance of the tendency mentioned in another 
place, in which men looking at one element magnify its 
importance till it comprises all that part of the world which 
they are considering ; and they unconsciously fill out in prac- 
tice what is deficient in theory. Although Schleiermacher 
starts from the same root, yet he emphasizes the subjective 
side too much to really belong in this sense to the mystical 
school. To the extent that he does this, his view may be 
discussed or examined. Where the objective side is dwelt 
upon, to the entire exclusion of the subjective or individual, 
science has little opportunity of exercise. In extreme mys- 
ticism, God is finally to become absolutely knowable, because 
the soul will come to be one with him. But Schleiermacher's 
enthusiasm over the feeling oi dependence is so great that he 
forgets to ascertain much about God; and, consequently, 
God is left unknowable, since the soul is kept intensely self- 
conscious over its own state. This it must lose before the 
exaltation and peace of which he speaks can be realized. 

But what is this feeling of dependence in its beginning ? Is 
it not founded on a conscious recognition of the relation between 
the self and the not-self 7 And what is such a recognition but 
an intellectual activity, a thought 1 It may not be otherwise 
specialized or determined ; but it is thought, be it ever so 
incipient. It may arouse one emotion or another, but they 



36 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

are not the bottom psychological elements in the case. 
There can be no doubt to later reflection that the emotion 
of utter dependence and helplessness in the arms of Nat- 
ure would be a very early conscious feeling; but so defi- 
nite a thing as this emotion must have its frame in a previous 
thought. Mere feeling alone, of such a stage and character 
as that referred to, is mere indefiniteness and vagueness. 
It would not know itself as religious or as anything else. 
There is nothing definite about it till it has had its conscious 
beginning and direction in a conscious recognition of rela- 
tionship. But this puts the origin in thinking instead of 
feeling. 

(3) The Unorthodox Mystics. — It is worthy of note 
in this connection that religion outside of the Church has 
also its mystical minds, and these, too, in even greater vari- 
ety. The term must in some way cover the Nature Pantheism 
of the Persian Saadi, the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus, the 
earlier Brahmanism and the Buddhistic Nihilism of the East, 
the Quietism of Madame Guyon, the Cambridge Platonism 
of Henry More, and the revulsions from an articulate, rea- 
soned out, mechanical philosophy to an immediate spiritual 
one, such as those widely different types of Novalis, Carlyle, 
and Emerson. These fine spirits, each profoundly religious 
in his way, would build their peculiar styles of temples on 
some species of emotion. And, in so far as this was sup- 
posed to be ultimate, the remarks just urged against Schleier- 
macher's basis would apply with equal force. 

Like all other extremes, mysticism has achieved its glitter- 
ing good at the sacrifice of other equally glittering goods. 
Does it reach spiritual heights — it has run perilous risks. 
It oftener falls into the worst of fanaticisms and aberrations. 
These high altitudes of emotion induce deliriousness, dreams, 
or intoxication. In its imagined oneness with Divinity, the 
spirit sometimes attaches to itself an unreasonable impor- 
tance. It imbibes imputed wisdom, righteousness, and per- 
fection from its high relationship. " If I were not, God 



LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 37 

could not be; I am as necessary to him as he is to me." 
It thinks that what it thinks is divine. " I am the voice of 
God." " I get the truth by direct intuition." " I am wholly 
sanctified, and therefore cannot sin or err." But, in all such 
instances, thought, feeling, and will have run wild. Fancy 
holds the reins. It dreams out its world. In such frenzies, 
the most ridiculous claims of power, knowledge, and author- 
ity may be made, and the most despicable deeds may be 
committed, all in the name of inspiration. Yet in the 
tendency there is the profoundest truth, and betimes the 
highest religious attainments and inspiration are reached. 
Mysticism of the better class is always a tonic to the com- 
mon religious life. Even where men do. not agree with the 
mystics in faith, they find themselves strengthened in the 
reading of their thoughts. Their best works will forever be 
popular to the devoutly inclined of each and every creed. 

(4) Non-mystic Emotion Theories. — Besides these 
genuine experiencers and theorizers of religion as feeling 
for religion's sake, there is another multitude, — philosophers, 
pseudo-philosophers, and half-informed writers, — who have 
imagined themselves great discoverers. Finding some one 
or more of the feelings prominently represented in certain 
types of religious manifestation falling under their observa- 
tion, they have fixed upon this with great enthusiasm as 
the worthy or unworthy source of this best of all goods 
or worst of all evils. Upon this, thereafter, they endlessly 
dilate. It proves itself so satisfactory that further exami- 
nation of cases is regarded by them as entirely superfluous ; 
or, in case other facts be afterwards brought to notice, they 
are ignored. The case is already decided. As a class 
(though with exceptions), these writers have been inimi- 
cal to the religious life. 

The Feeling of Fear. — Among other subdivisions of 
the principal mental faculties, the feeling of fear has been 
singled out as the fountain-head of this absorbing impulse. 



38 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

It has at one or another time had its strenuous defenders. 
Among the ancients, Epicurus and Lucretius were its expo- 
nents. Among moderns, Hobbes is perhaps the most able. 
Its advocates are by no means " religionists." The emotion 
theory has perhaps as many supporters proportionally 
among scientists and philosophers as among pious folk. But 
here the object is often critical and destructive. To found 
religion on mere feeling is to a " man of intellect " the best 
means of throwing discredit upon it. What is emotional 
he does not respect. Only the operations of intellect are 
dignified and worthy. Things of mere feeling are trivial, 
if not contemptible. For this reason, some — who have 
become enamoured of intellectual pursuits, and who, in so far 
as they have given attention to religion, have done so mainly 
to blame the mistakes of its institutions — most naturally 
set the whole religious life of man aside, along with other 
frivolous, transitory superstitions. Among the emotions sup- 
posed to give rise to it, none is easier to alight upon than 
fear. With these theorizers, it has the credit of all conse- 
quences of the religious life, good or bad. It is said that 
the essence of all religion is the sense that there are other 
beings more powerful than ourselves. Not knowing exactly 
their nature and their attitude toward us, we regard them 
with awe and reverence ; and, in the hope of placating them 
for possible or imagined offences, we pay them homage 
and worship. By some it is urged that the introduction 
among mankind of a belief in such superior beings is due 
to the craft of statesmen and rulers, as a device to which 
to appeal for the better maintenance of authority over the 
ignorant multitude. If so, these men surely called attention 
to more than they realized. According to the hypothesis, 
they were the only ones capable of seeing such a possibility 
of existence or relationship; and, though there may have 
possibly been a practical necesssity in the discovery, yet it 
proved its legitimacy by the hold which it has taken on 
human thought. Indeed, we may say, had it not been thus 
awakened, it must inevitably have come about in some 
other way. 



LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 39 

What are we to think of this theory of fear ? Under its 
treatment, religion, at least, becomes universal. Fear is one 
of the most general characteristics of the race. It is almost 
as universal as appetite. In fact, it is as common to beast as 
to man. For whatever creature has the capacity of shudder- 
ing in the presence of objects indefinitely powerful, and at 
the same time of being more or less attracted by those ob- 
jects, should have the credit of being religious, if it be a 
credit. On such a basis there cannot be claimed for man a 
monopoly of this sense, lofty or otherwise. The emotion of 
the horse in the presence of his master or the baying of the 
dog at the moon are religious feelings and acts of worship 
from this stand-point. Without much doubt, they are as truly 
so as many of the practices of the lower human races de- 
scribed as such by travellers. But a theory is put to its test 
when it is tried by the facts. Would the general sense of 
thinking men put into the class religious all the instances 
of fear which this theory would require ? Though they may 
have elements akin, yet the child's dread of the darkness, the 
rustic's quickened heart-beat and hurried pace by the country 
graveyard, the school-boy's crafty terror of his master's frown, 
the soldier's dread of official displeasure, or Rip Van Winkle's 
shudder at thought of Gretchen's coming rage, as religious 
acts and feelings, would none of them receive general con- 
sent. Again, a theory, besides excluding none, must include 
all the facts. This teaching receives its greatest strain when 
mention is made of the types of religious feeling where fear 
has disappeared entirely. "Perfect love casteth out fear." 
The Deity has come to be regarded with complete trust and 
faith. The believer is filled with the greatest peace. That 
this view utterly fails to stand the test is evident from the 
fact that many religions have gradually dropped the element 
of fear, but in doing so have dropped none of their religious- 
ness. ^s 

As an explanation of demonology, of the regard for super- 
natural beings in a negative sense, it has the highest merit; 
but, as an interpretation of the positive elements of religion. 



40 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

it is Utterly valueless. It has the great advantage of being 
simple ; and, because of this and the fact that it so thoroughly 
explains one side of the problem, it has met with a large 
acceptance as the most satisfactory hypothesis. Carrying it 
out to its consistent end, many predict the time when the 
superstitions of religion shall be things of the past. This 
they do with much reason from their point of view. If the 
comprehension as natural force of what we supposed to be 
definite personalities in charge of certain departments of 
nature does away with our fear, surely it is only a matter of 
time when the world of nature may become transparent to 
human thought, and with this would cease our homage. But 
on the other side, when the more the world becomes trans- 
parent and the more we see of its perfection in all ways, the 
more we find to increase our interest in it and our enthusiasm 
for it, the more we strive to conform our lives to its laws, the 
more we see of its deeper meaning and underlying principle, 
— surely the day of no religion becomes farther and farther 
removed. It was, in fact, the day before humanity arrived at 
its religious capacity. Moreover, in its philosophic preten- 
sions, this theory must be saluted by the same farewell that 
was given to that of feeling in general; even in the event 
that this special feeling formed the chief background of re- 
ligion (which we see it does not), there is a more fundamental 
element behind. This feeling of fear is founded on the con- 
scious recognition of a relation, and such a recognition is a 
thought entirely independent of the after-gush of emotion, 
which may flood the personality and generate action. 

The Feeling of Wonder. — It would indeed be wonder- 
ful if somebody did not see in wonder itself the fountain of 
this activity over which there has been so much human query. 
But our expectation is met. To this peculiar mental attitude, 
likewise, have the source and substance of religion been as- 
cribed. So the great synthetic philosopher, Herbert Spencer, 
finds it. Religion is a feeling, a feeling of wonder, a feeling 
of wonder in the presence of the Unknown. '^ Taken liter- 



LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 4I 

ally, this theory is self-contradictory and self- annihilating; for 
the mind is never troubled with wonders or emotions of any 
sort over things of which it has no knowledge. Hence we 
must not take it directly at its word, but assume that it means 
more than it states in the terms. This "Unknown" is at 
least known to exist, and to manifest itself in ways sufficient 
to excite wonder over its nature, etc. It at least stands to 
the world in the relation of the operator of a mechanical pan- 
tomime or the director of a drama who himself is not seen. 
Thus the theory is exceedingly inexact in the use of terms. 
Moreover, it plays a sort of circular argument in first defining 
religion to be a certain conscious relation to an unknown 
somewhat, thus limiting its scope to one mental activity, and 
then proceeding to state the truism which it has just consti- 
tuted ; namely, that religion consists from first to last in the 
sentiment of wonder! By the terms which the theory has 
set, what else could it be? The soul cannot admire, nor 
fear, nor love, nor even feel strictly dependent on what it 
does not at all know. If it does feel itself dependent on 
something unknowable, it has no assurance that its bene- 
factor is this "Unknowable" or another one. "Unknow- 
ables" cannot be distinguished nor restricted in numbers: 
there may be many or few or none. Nothing is left to do 
but marvel. What untold possibilities, what unimaginable 
incomprehensibilities, may that which we do not know stand 
for! Beyond wonder, we are powerless. The theory at 
start has dried up every other fountain of the soul. 

But we must not stop here. The theory has a yet more 
radical defect : it is psychologically too weak for its under- 
taking. It would make religion arise in a "feeling of won- 
der " ; but wonder is not itself primarily a feeling. It is an 
incomplete cognition, an act of the knowing consciousness 
which has fallen short of its aim, and which only in its secon- 
dary stage, as it becomes reconscious of the failure, is inten- 
sified, or, in other words, receives the flush of an emotion. 
In short, the theory, though it contains much of truth and a 
richness of suggestion in its elaboration, as an account of the 



42 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

psychological origin of this so seemingly perplexing activity, 
has the same shortcoming as the theories before mentioned. 

§ 8. Religion IS of Thought. 

(i) Rationalists, etc. — The theory that all genuine relig- 
ion has its origin and essence in the thinking, reasoning 
faculty goes in history under the names, Rationalism, Nat- 
ural Theology, Natural Religion, etc. Like the other exclu- 
sive claims set up, it is the theory both of the friends and 
enemies of religion. One large class of its advocates in 
Christendom belongs within the Church itself. These do 
not lay the stress so much on the fact that religion consists 
in intellectual activity as on the fact that it is to be devel- 
oped and sustained by efforts of reason. During the past 
century, they have put forth a vast amount of literature 
purporting to support by proofs from reason the claims of 
Christianity. Of this type are the many works on Christian 
Evidences, Christian Institutions, and Systematic Theology. 
These usually claim rational demonstration (" in the face of 
Jews, Turks, and infidels ") for the historic doctrinal faith 
of the Church. Not only this, but each different sect holds 
implicit confidence in its ability to put beyond doubt, "be- 
fore all candid reasoners," its claim to recognition as the 
only legitimate one. On the other hand, the rejecters of 
the faith in all its forms hold that by the same powers of 
reason it can be shown to have no basis whatever in fact. 
It is the superlative myth which must be exploded before the 
world can go on. 

But our present concern is with neither of these. The 
interest here centres in a class of minds who at the begin- 
ning have no cause to defend or oppose, and who after con- 
siderable painstaking have traced the stream of religion to 
its supposed source in thought. But these, too, after the 
manner of men, tend to exclusiveness. They are inclined to 
believe that the little stream with which they start has no 
tributaries, that thought is source and all besides. They are 



LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 43 

invariably successful in ridding religion of much error, but 
their success usually continues so far as to rid themselves 
also of that which they would renovate. They winnow the 
wheat till there is left no wheat. The process itself becomes 
so fascinating that reason gets reckless and loses its ration- 
ality. The wildness sometimes displayed in this tendency 
rivals the extremest cases of mystical delirium. But these, 
like all exaggerated types of activity, can be of but short 
duration and limited influence. There is a widely different 
class of writers, — sometimes among the most respectable 
philosophers, — whose general tendency is to help on ration- 
alism. In some form or other, they find either the origin or 
the essence of religion, or both, to consist in the operations 
of the thinking faculty. One or two of the most noticeable 
and able of these efforts must be considered. 

(2) Belief and Faith — Jacobi. — Judging the religion 
of Jacobi from its practical outcome, one would be surprised 
to find it classed with those who trace religion to an origin 
in thought. Yet, although it gets by essence and application 
a plain mystical turn, it is at beginning a matter of belief. 
" I believe ; by my faith I am a Christian ; by my reason I 
am a heathen." ^7 Here is a faith accepted on belief, and 
that contrary to reason ! It has the appearance of straining 
reason up to the pitch of credulity, and then accepting its 
decision. This belief is belief in the reality of an ideal. 
But this is trying to make thought out of feeling and desire. 
He wants to accept his faith from the hands of thought, but 
does not see the way. That which he has in mind is evi- 
dently a feeling of the poetical imaginative character. It 
arises intuitively from the enthusiastic mystical contempla- 
tion of nature. It really has an origin in thought ; but it is 
not thought at the time Jacobi undertakes its examination, 
nor does he spy out its true beginning. The belief of which 
he speaks may be true or it may not ; it is all one for the 
purpose of religion. From its truth the belief gets none of 
its religious worth. All value lies in its persistence. The 



44 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

belief must perforce lift the soul into realms of contempla- 
tion far above the transitory and conflicting things of life. 
To talk with less rhetorical fervor, — though perhaps at the 
expense of the theory, — it is neither more nor less than 
excitement, enthusiasm, lofty emotion awakened by an inter- 
est arising from perfect belief in any object. The virtue 
of the theory is not so high but that emotions of suf- 
ficient strength awakened by unworthy objects may come 
under the class religious. The sublime awe filling the be- 
holder of the starry heavens, the fervid excitement in the 
mind of a romance reader, the emotions of pity and benevo- 
lence stirred in the philanthropic heart at the sight of misery, 
the passionate frenzy of the nihilistic fanatic, as well as the 
pious devotion of the Christian saint, must all have their 
place in this religion. 

We have, then, this curious circumstance : that, although 
religion has its origin entirely in a belief (a thought), it is in 
substance ever after entirely a feeling. In treating the ques- 
tion of origin, his theory properly comes under the class 
thought ; while, in a discussion on the nature or essence of 
the religious life, it would fall in with emotional theories. 
We should further notice that in the statement of his own 
faith — " By my faith I am a Christian ; by my reason I am 
a heathen" — he leaves his mind in a contradiction. Now, 
it is one of the chief realities of religion that it does away 
conflict. Its end is peace, in one of its aims. A religion 
that leaves its believers in such spiritual contradiction is no 
sufficient religion. Jacobi belongs to the school of thinkers 
who declaim much against reason, and urge the spirit's 
native power of immediacy, or intuition in knowledge. 
Schleiermacher, Jacobi, De Wette, and others of this class 
reason out and write endless discussions to prove that reason 
is not to be trusted. Through this inconsistency of dis- 
claiming reason, though always leaning upon it, such writers 
vitiate greatly their results. From such premises, of course, 
logical consistency becomes impossible. 



LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 45 

(3) Freedom and Thought — Hegel. — At the same 
time that Schleiermacher was expounding his celebrated 
doctrine of the "feeling of dependence," another thinking 
giant in another room of the same university (Berlin) was 
discoursing on this subject, and announcing a conclusion the 
very antithesis of this. We feel that a mind of unusual 
logical powers has charge of us when we pass under Hegel's 
tuition. He is with those who find religion to be of the 
thinking faculty. He is especially hostile to the feeling 
theory. Man shares this sense of dependence with the 
brutes, but they are not religious. Man surpasses them in 
his conscious freedom and higher powders of thought. Into 
this, then, must we look both for the origin and substance 
of his religious bent. Indeed, at its highest, religion should 
be the complete antithesis of what Schleiermacher affirmed, 
— namely, the sense of perfect freedom ; because the human 
spirit in its religious consciousness is exactly the Divine 
Spirit coming to consciousness of itself in and through the 
finite. 

Again, this matter of feeling is an indifferent thing. It 
has no content aside from what it gets through thought. 
It may be as strong with one object as with another, — in the 
breast of the lowest criminal bent on his evil purposes as in 
the aspirations of the loftiest saint. It is all one to the 
nature of feeling whether its object be good or bad, high or 
low, true or false. Not so with the nature of thought. Its 
content is definite, and has its manifest object. 

To Hegel, then, religion is "a matter of thought, of 
spirit." ^8 This to him is the basis of all things, of the 
universe itself. Men say that mind is a mass, or an arrange- 
ment of phenomena ; the phenomena are all we know. But 
what makes phenomena ? Take away the thinker, and where 
are the phenomena ? A world without thought is no world. 
Thought is always, thought is everywhere. It underlies all 
experiences and all worlds. Viewed by the Understanding, 
" I " and " phenomena " are two, not one. Viewed by the 
Reason, they are one, not two. Viewed by both as they 



46 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

must be, the universe is a unity in diversity. Phenomena 
can only be as thought is. Nature, or the totality of phe- 
nomena, can only be as thought underlies it. This must be 
so, for only as you take thought out of nature is it inter- 
pretable. In this way, the interpretation of nature is going 
on increasingly. Nature is becoming more and more intel- 
ligible or transparent to the consciousness of the world. 
What is natural is translatable. Because nature is articu- 
late, expressive of thought, man gets on in science. Now, 
the human spirit, on coming face to face with the Spirit in 
nature, recognizes its kindred. This is the beginning of 
religion. Gradually, it comes to know its relationship to the 
Spirit. Religion is the thought of the individual as it places 
itself in relation with the universal. Man is thus seen to be 
"the image of God"; and therefore he must, in one sense, 
by very nature be religious. Yet in Hegelian philosophy 
there is a still higher stage than the religious for the human 
spirit to attain ; namely, that of Absolute Knowledge ( Wis- 
sen). This is to be reached through philosophy. Philoso- 
phy is far superior to both religion and art as an exponent 
of the relation between man and the Absolute. 

Hegel did much powerful thinking on this topic, but it 
has its serious limitations. Side by side with the profound- 
est insight and reasoning faculty, we have the same par- 
tiality in the grounding and working out of his theory that 
we have seen in some of the other principal views examined ; 
while this view labors under the additional disadvantage of 
being more difficult of comprehension and less practical in 
application. These are difficulties due to its speculative 
character. Had the theory grown out of an historical and 
ethnical study of religions, it would never have contained 
those prodigious flights of abstraction, which, though their 
study serves as a most excellent intellectual exercise, ex- 
press but very partially the realities of the religious life. ^9 

The view that religion has its first gleam psychologically 
in the faculty of thought has by all odds the advantage. 
But this is as far as we may urge. Thought pre-empts the 



LEADING PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 47 

domain, but by no primogeniture assumptions can it entail 
the territory to its posterity. Enthusiastic counsel in its 
behalf has "wickedly" tried to do so. To explain in 
another way, by exclusiveness in shutting out the contribu- 
tions of other tributary faculties, the stream becomes narrow 
and shallow, and has not substance sufficient to fertilize the 
region through which it flows. Indeed, with such a shallow 
Nile, life runs a precious risk of becoming a barren waste. 
Thought is the head-water surely, but it receives vast in- 
crease further on. In the sense hinted before, reason is 
first; and "religion is reasonable, but reason is not re- 
ligion." 20 



CHAPTER III. 

RECONSIDERATION AND CONCLUSIONS. 

§ 9. Partiality and Consequent Unrest. 

In some or all of their manifestations, these three leading 
views of the source and nature of the religious life have been 
coexistent in the world since the dawn of written philosophy. 
Most men live largely in the region of what may be described 
as the analytic or individualizing sphere of the mind, so far as 
concerns their intellectual operations and realizations. Few 
indulge extensively in comparison, and fewer yet rise to the 
recognition of the higher unity which lies behind all this 
individuality of things. Because of this, in their theories 
they place the emphasis on the feature in which their interest 
has been awakened. The more the potency of this feature 
is observed, the more does its importance become magnified, 
until finally it is conceived as all-sufficient and all-compre- 
hensive. So large does it seem that they honestly believe 
the whole world to be within its domain or under its control. 
If by founder or opponent such a view be carried to the 
extreme in its application, it breaks down from sheer incon- 
sistent exclusiveness. If only moderately urged, it proves an 
inspiration, which, co-operating with the unconscious action 
of other equally important elements, helps on the actual 
progress of life. Upon this concurrent and unconscious 
recognition of other fundamental component principles is 
due the whole success of the movement supposedly based 
on one principle. Herein is a law of the most far-reaching 
application. When enthusiasts working in a special line 
ascribe, for example, the whole of our modern high civiliza- 
tion to the work of Science, to the beneficent influence of 



RECONSIDERATION AND CONCLUSIONS 49 

Protestant Evangelical Christianity, or to any other one ism 
or ology, it is because their eyes are dazzled by the object of 
their interest. To one who is searching among the elements, 
hoping to find the key, the secret principle, of all things, or 
of his department merely, and to one who is looking for 
some great and overpowering theory, which shall compel all 
others to its position and thus make peace and harmony, — 
to him, indeed, the survey of this chaos is most dishearten- 
ing. Little wonder that the soul, unable to see its way in 
hope, should sometimes land in complete scepticism or pes- 
simism. 

Yet to this the mind will not willingly go. Its nature is to 
live, and this is the way to spiritual death. But, even though 
such a calamity be not the end, the reflecting niind which 
comes under the tuition of dogmatic and one-sided theo- 
ries is destined sooner or later to react ; and reaction is not 
healthful mental growth, but rather disturbance. Indeed, 
the problems of life are quite uncertain enough to try our 
equanimity, without the aggravation of being taught to in- 
crease the difficulty by seizing hold now on one, now on 
another partial and untenable theory evolved apart from 
experience by abstract imagination. Unconfused by those 
theories which originate in narrow outlooks and experiences, 
the mind will ever rise above the doubts and perplexities 
which Nature imposes. It doubts, but does not stay in 
doubt. Some sort of reconciliation must be. Some Provi- 
dence there is somewhere. Suppose it does conclude the 
life of doubt is the better life : what's the result ? Only 
a momentary di ression, if left unhindered. As Bishop 
Blougram says for Browning : — 

" And now what are we ? unbelievers both, 

. . . Where's 
The gain ? How can we guard our unbelief, 
Make it bear fruit to us ? — the problem here. 
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, 
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 
A chorus-ending from Euripides, — 
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears 
As old and new at once as nature's self, 



50 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

To rap and knock and enter in our soul, 
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring. 
Round the ancient idol, on his base again, — 
The grand Perhaps ! We look on helplessly. 
There the old misgivings, crooked questions are — 
This good God, — what he could do, if he would, 
Would, if he could — then must have done long since, 
If so, when, where, and how ? some way must be, — 
Once feel about, and soon or late you hit 
Some sense, in which it might be, after all. 



All we have gained then by our unbelief 

Is a life of doubt diversified by faith. 

For one of faith diversified by doubt : 

We call the chess-board white, — we call it black. 

The sum of all is — yes, my doubt is great. 

My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough." 21 

In religion, men should find the life of peace. All below 
is turmoil. That religion is a pretence in which some peace 
is not found. That religion is noblest which, corresponding 
nearest to facts, puts most inspiration and most harmony 
into human life. That theory which depends for its life on 
the utter exclusion of all other equally fundamental ele- 
ments is preparing for no permanent peace, but greater 
war by and by. None of our faculties will submit to be 
strangled. Like the individuals in society, each demands 
the right of life and the enjoyment of its activity. Each 
must then learn its place, and come to respect the parts 
which others play. Whatever is, and is essentially part of 
our nature, must somehow get reconciled to all else, or we 
must quit our philosophizing and declare creation an irre- 
ducible muddle. Those elements which have been over and 
over emphasized as the partial or total constituents of the 
religious life must, presumedly, somewhere be permitted a 
presence in the hoped for ultimate unification. Partial Re- 
ligion can learn a great lesson from Science and Philosophy, 
— that nature is one and indivisible. To know is to know in 
relation to the whole. 

" All are needed by each one ; 
Nothing is fair or good alone." 



RECONSIDERATION AND CONCLUSIONS 5 1 

Life is not of one kind : it ought to be the harmony of many- 
kinds. Religion is not the work of one, nor of two faculties, 
but the blending of all into one complete nature. Com- 
pleted religion is an attitude of the whole being. At its 
highest, it demands the realization of the whole of life. 

§ 10. Will, Emotion, Thought. 

(i) Order of their Functional Precedence. — We are 

now prepared for more immediate contact with the question 
at issue, and for more direct statements of the answer al- 
ready anticipated. The very definite limits of the inquiry 
here instituted should also be clear. Though we cannot 
avoid touching frequently upon other questions,- yet the 
discussion throughout is to be held responsible only for an 
answer to the one which asks. When and how in the individ- 
ual consciousness does the religious side of life begin ? The 
one-sidedness and exclusiveness of the philosophical theories 
portrayed in the previous chapter make it evident that, no 
matter whether men are psychologically planned alike or 
different, religion can be limited neither to an affair of will, 
nor of feeling, nor of thought, nor of any one species of 
action, emotion, or cognition alone. Again, it has been 
shown with somewhat of clearness where it may and may 
not take its rise. If the words have been used with a rea- 
sonable degree of exactness, it begins in a cognitive activity. 
An act of thought is back of all else. Before thinking 
(however simple) begins, there is no self-consciousness ; 
before and without self-consciousness, there is no religion. 
The most primary notion in religion is the conscious recog- 
nition of something beyond and greater than the self, or, in 
other words, the self's awakening to the sense of a reality 
in the not-self profounder than the ordinary observations of 
life had revealed. (See § ii.) This cannot come without 
definite thinking. After this comes response in the shape 
of what we term feelings and volitions. Then out of the 
impulse toward self-preservation and advancement grow mo- 



52 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

tives and incentives which take their place as permanently 
impelling and constituting elements of the religious life. 

(2) A Couple of Difificulties. — In these days, a sort of 
practical origin for the religious craving is found in the im- 
pulsive struggle toward self-preservation, or, psychologically 
speaking, in the combined activity of feeling and will to- 
gether. One of two things is here to be understood : either 
the question has not been sounded to the depths, and the 
fundamental incipient religious attitude of our being has 
not been perceived, or else the word " origin " is used in a 
different sense from that of which we here speak. And 
even in the latter event there is a confusion of two entirely 
different subjects ; namely, that which constitutes the dy- 
namic impulse in the maintenance of the religious attitude 
is assumed or taken to be the original function of mind by 
which this attitude first arises. It is true there is a sense 
or a point of view from which it may seem proper to say 
that religion is primarily the product of that side of human 
nature to which we sometimes give the name volitional im- 
pulses. But this is really the answer to another question j 
namely, Where in human need has it its root ? out of what 
practical depths of our being does it grow, — i.e., continue to 
be founded? and not, as here, the question, What faculty 
in the individual is first impressed, moved upon, called Into 
exercise, when the religious life begins ? The one is, so to 
say, the objective compulsory source; the other, the sub- 
jective spontaneous origin. 

If, however, we look into this view still deeper, we per- 
ceive that the origin which has been looked forward to 
throughout this paper may be justly called the source of 
this so-called source, because until the man had become 
intellectually conscious of his relationship to the Somewhat 
without, and by his knowing faculties had contrasted its 
powers and his needs, he did not begin to be a religious 
being. So, too, when we speak of the race, this cognitive 
root must have reached a sufficient degree of development 



RECONSIDERATION AND CONCLUSIONS 53 

to consciously grasp that relationship before the evolution of 
life had constituted what we term a religious being. The 
other elements of life, including this one in lower degree, 
were all in possession of beings on a lower stage; yet they 
were not, and are not, as we believe, religious beings. 

In general, those who regard religion as originating, phil- 
osophically speaking, in the desire of man to get help from 
superior powers in order to preserve his life and carry out 
his projects, etc., have stopped the inquiry on arriving at a 
practical answer. They have left unasked the here oft-empha- 
sized fundamental question, — How did he get this idea of 
superior power? An intellectual activity in this direction 
had taken place before he ever came to such notions as the 
possibility of supernatural assistance. Before he desired it, 
he had come to believe in its existence, and in the proba- 
bility of his being in such a relation as to obtain it. Men 
never desire what they have never conceived of. Especially 
unreasonable is such an assumption, when it relates to such 
a previously unexperienced idea as the notion of supernat- 
ural help must have been to primeval man. 

Again, it is often said that the thinker need not necessa- 
rily sympathize with the object in his cold meditation, and, 
therefore, religion (to which feeling is in some way indis- 
pensable) cannot have its origin in thinking, but in sympathy. 
But it must be kept in mind that this sympathy (the relig- 
ious regard) does not enter into life till thought has made 
way for it. It is, moreover, a mistake to suppose that profit- 
able thought can be carried on without entering into sym- 
pathy with its object. The concentration of consciousness 
upon an object, or what we term attention, generates what 
we call feeling, or an intensification of the cognitive state. 
This is its natural legitimate consummation; and what we 
term thinking is not complete without the taking up or the 
realizing of the object in the self. Other so-called thinking 
is partial, exclusive, incomplete, contradictory. After think- 
ing has completed itself (?>., aroused our nature by concen- 
trated attention upon its object), we name it an emotion, and 



54 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

designate the various kinds by names which indicate to us 
the direction in which the attention was centred. 

Thought, then, is generic. A cognitive act is first and all 
the way a basis. By it man comes into realized relations 
with the external. Sensation wakes his consciousness; in 
thinking, it is ordering and connecting phenomena and relat- 
ing itself to these. Its operations must ever be accom- 
panied by certain sentiments appropriate to the various 
relationships which we sustain to the external world of men 
and things in their individuality and totality, or unity. Feel- 
ing, such as that which we term religious {i.e., the noble 
emotion), and action determined by the individual will, {i.e., 
moral action), are both specific, and are outgrowths of self- 
conscious thinking. I think; as I think, I feel, — i.e.., as I 
think, so are my emotions ; and as I think and feel, so I 
determine and act (if unhindered). Cognition at the bottom, 
or at the start, makes possible the feeling; in feeling, the 
being or personality is aroused, and the motive or the occa- 
sion to act is supplied; the act follows naturally and without 
further process, unless counteracted by another motive or 
some outside obstacle. The act is controlled by feeling, 
and the feeling by thought. The order in fundamental 
importance is the reverse of the treatment in this section. 

Even grant that the emotional is a distinctive fundamental 
faculty of mind, the admission is done away at once when 
we face the fact that no emotion ever arises until a con- 
scious cognitive mental operation has occurred. Such a 
thing as the advent of an emotion before there has been an 
intellectual recognition, a conscious grasping in thought, of 
something real or imaginary over which the feeling may 
glow, is unthinkable, is equivalent to saying that one may 
thrill about something which he never thought of nor imag- 
ined. What we term an act of knowledge precedes every 
emotion, and is its substance. The driving, impelling force 
which, with conscious cognitive ability, forms the basis of 
human life, accompanies it in every waking moment. The 
one forms, so to speak, the steam power which actuates 



RECONSIDERATION AND CONCLUSIONS 55 

existence ; while the other is the engineer who is the con- 
scious observer and realizer of all. 

I am aware that much might be said about the way in 
which thought is instigated and controlled by action (or vo- 
lition) and feelings ; but, as a discussion of precedence, this 
to rae is much the same as raising a serious argument about 
the great influence of the cart over the horse. It is agreed 
that the cart is indispensable ; but it is not nearly so initiative 
as the horse, nor should it be placed before the horse. 

(3) Analogies from Other Phases of Life. — Though 
religion is not wonder, nor fear, nor causality, nor morality, 
nor feeling, nor thought, solely and only, yet this is not to 
say that it has no wonder, fear, etc., as influential factors. 
Moreover, this does not assert that religion has exclusive 
control of all or any of these elements. They are activities 
of mind which are operative in most of the affairs of life. 
In what, then, does religion differ from other human affairs ? 
How can one institution be different from another, if all are 
developed and carried on by the same mental activities. To 
this I may reply : How can watch-making differ from horse- 
shoeing, since both require the use of the hands and eyes ? 
Or how can astronomy differ from psychology, since both 
require the most faithful exercise of intellect? It is very 
plain that the attitude determines the result. We name the 
result after the attitude. If a man goes one way, he gets to 
Eastport ; if the other, he brings up at San Diego by and by. 
In science, the mental powers are directed to the analysis of 
the world and the discernment of its laws. In religion, at 
its beginning, those powers are turned to beholding the 
world as a whole, as a manifestation of a Spirit of which the 
beholder regards himself in some way a miniature likeness. 
" Worship is a regard for what is above us." This matter of 
attitude is the key to the problem. Religion is at start a 
mental attitude, comprehending later its consequent activity. 
In so far, it is not different from nor more mysterious than 
any other human expression ; e.g., mathematics, morality, art, 



56 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

or astronomy. Each and all begin in a conscious cognitive 
attitude of mind toward their specific objects. From this 
attitude each gets its peculiar character, and, as before 
said, is named accordingly. Thus, when the mind faces the 
external in the discernment of points, lines, surfaces, and 
solids, together with their various possible relations, we have 
decided to call the posture mathematics. When it turns 
toward the observation of relations subsisting (or which it 
deems from experience should subsist) among those parts of 
the external world made up of its fellow-men, we term it 
ethics. When it studies the spheres, the attitude is astron- 
omy. When it strives to express the ideal through the real, 
we say it is art. When it turns upon itself in contemplation 
and considers at the same time bodily conditions, it is psy- 
chology. And so on for every possible attitude the soul may 
take. Following this first conscious recognizing posture, 
each specific human sphere of expression consists thence- 
forth of mental and bodily activities corresponding to the 
relationships between the knowing subject and the would-be- 
known or related object. Every attitude whatever which the 
mind assumes and consciously dwells upon in fixed attention 
results naturally in corresponding courses of thought, emo- 
tion, and conduct. Discern then in any sphere of life the 
faculty by which such an attitude arises, and you have dis- 
covered its psychological origin. Watch the process and 
see what faculties are aroused and set into activity, and you 
have its nature. Follow out these activities, and you have 
learned its function and capabilities. 

§ II. The Root-thought of Religion. 

Our search in this essay being limited to the discovery, if 
possible, of the origin and nature of that which in the relig- 
ious consciousness is fundamental, the many allied and at- 
tractive themes which continually arise must be left aside. 
Nor should the reader be dissatisfied if he misses here many 
of the expressions usually familiar in discussions on religion. 



RECONSIDERATION AND CONCLUSIONS 57 

Their use in a treatise which aspires to deal scientifically 
with the problem would bring in assumptions unjustifiable 
under this heading and at this stage of the investigation. 

It must be observed that, because the first beginnings of 
what we now know as the religious nature are ascribed to 
the thinking capacity, it is not thereby implied that thought 
is necessarily the principal element in religion where it 
appears as a factor in the world of life. The views here 
presented do not come from counsel retained in behalf of 
" rationalism," nor do they seek to furnish crumbs of com- 
fort for any special ism. They are the utterances of a mind 
free from " school " affiliations of whatever sort, which re- 
spects honest, independent efforts of whatever origin, and 
which is trying to make an impartial inquiry for certain 
bottom facts and relationships within religions, to it as yet 
unsatisfactorily explained by any school, and even by many 
still unperceived. What part, function, and influence each 
primary faculty exerts must receive consideration at another 
time. 

Again, it may be supposed that the position taken implies 
the comprehension by the worshipper of the object wor- 
shipped. Nothing of the sort is intended. The deities of 
man may be — indeed, have undoubtedly been — very little 
comprehended at any time. It was partly the perception of 
this very incomprehensibleness which first provoked what 
we term religious emotion and acts of devotion. Nor did 
the adoration cease when it was discerned that the mys- 
tery was not resolved by further attentions. Indeed, when 
enough is perceived or comprehended to rivet attention, this 
remaining inscrutableness enhances indispensably the relig- 
ious sentiment. Because His ways are past finding out. He 
is so much the more adored. We cannot grasp the mys- 
teries of the transcendent nature toward which the emotions 
go forth, but our thought has first laid hold upon enough to 
make us yearn for more. So that at last we can truly say, 
"A God understood would be no God at all." But the world 
is in no immediate danger from the wisdom of science being 



58 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

able to fathom reality, and thus destroy what to us is a most 
essential element of Deity; namely, ideality. With every 
explanation comes the tantalizing consciousness that the 
sphere of mystery is thereby enlarged even more than it 
was diminished, so that Religion is ceasing to fear Science, 
and learning instead the respect due to her best ally. Little 
by little, with such aid, she is learning those ways of Divin- 
ity which may be spoken, and getting glimpses of those ways 
which may not as yet be revealed. 

Here, also, I must beg leave to recall attention to a 
thought expressed in § 4 on the use of the term "religion." 
It was there urged that the word must be so used as to 
include all types of religious phenomena. To this must now 
be added the statement that, whatever theory of its root 
one may reach, it must be sufficient to explain all types, the 
lowest as well as the highest, the most unusual as well as 
the most common. It is quite too customary in our defini 
tions and theories of the good (in any sphere) to formulate 
them so as to rule out those views which we do not happen 
to fancy. But who may say that all that is not as mine is 
not of faith ? Who, on his high-bred plane, shall exclude 
from the nobility of the religious the early man who at the 
dawn of self-consciousness burst into emotion, as he for the 
first time beheld through some object of nature the mani- 
festation of a Presence akin to himself ? Who may say that 
the African's reverence for his fetich, even though he bribes 
or flogs it, shall not be honored by the term religion ? Shall 
we of another faith dub as irreligious the Chinaman's devo- 
tion to the phenomena of nature and to his ideal ancestral 
spirits ? Shall a Christian anthropomorphism say to a Comte- 
ian humanitarianism, Thy religion is infidelity? If John 
Stuart Mill, who could find no comfort in the Christian 
creed, could say of his wife, " Her memory became to me 
a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, sum- 
ming up as it did all worthiness, I endeavor to regulate my 
life," 22 shall an orthodox churchman sneeringly say. Thou 
hast no faith .? Must not each see for himself, if he sees ? 



RECONSIDERATION AND CONCLUSIONS 59 

He receives so much of the vision as he has eyes to see and 
ears to hear — not more. Another cannot make a faith for 
him. He may, it is true, borrow his creed ; but this does 
not bring him the spirit. Man must bring with him the 
insight. The blind man has no idea of color. He who 
dwells on the mere analysis of nature knows — and as such 
can know — no God. He sees no character, whose eye is 
only on the form. He gets no effect of the picture, who 
looks only at the daubs. He perceives no ideal, who fixes 
only upon the real. He misses most who misses this ; for 
the true worth of this real is proportionate to its capacity for 
expressing the ideal. 

What constitutes the nature of the primitive thought at 
the source of the religious life, as here developed, must now 
be more clearly set forth. We cannot go back to our most 
primitive religious ancestor, and watch the manifestations 
of his dawning self-consciousness, study his enchanted atti- 
tude, and learn by actual observation the mode of his 
religious awakening. But this does not deprive us of a 
nearly equal opportunity. We have within ourselves and 
about us numberless manifestations of the very same throb- 
bing, restless life. Barring the unnaturalness of our teach- 
ings and the artificialness of our habits, we can here study 
it in all stages of its development. Where the pure life has 
opportunity to live disenthralled of the harness of galling 
custom, free and natural as the birds of the air, it is not long 
in learning to know the Soul in nature. Deep calls unto 
deep. The soul feels the Nature without responding to the 
nature within. Little by little, this reciprocity increases, till 
finally the living human soul seeks a closer communion with 
the living Soul of nature. Nature goes out to Nature. The 
thought in the " me " is coming to perceive the wondrous 
meaning in the All. In proportion to the clearness of this 
apprehension of the deeper meaning of the world without 
will be the profoundness of the emotions stirred, and also of 
the effect of the religious ideal upon the active life of the 
individual. 



6o HOW RELIGION ARISES 

And thus out of the nature of actual present psychical 
experience we may draw an inference (having a force beyond 
mere theory) regarding the first religious experience of 
humanity. When man had gotten so far as to turn his 
thought upon the world about him in the attitude of con- 
scious discernment ; when the dawning realization that there 
was something deeper, more profound, than the mere surface 
of things had shown him, first beamed into his gross mind ; 
when the first awakening of this recognition of the some- 
thing beyond or underneath the mere usual phenomena 
which he had ever observed aroused his being, — then began 
he to be religious, and not till then. Though he may have 
arrived at the stature of physical man ages before this, 
though he may have experienced ever so severe trials in the 
struggle for existence, though he may have yearned for 
assistance ever so plaintively and earnestly, though he may 
have been ever so advanced in mechanical arts, ever so 
fluent of speech, or ever so sympathetic with his fellows, 
still he was in no historic or present ethnological sense of 
the term, religious. Not until the self became conscious of 
itself as over against what it supposed another Self in nature, 
— seen in a single object or in the totality and unity of a 
universe, — and had conceived of some personal relationship 
between the two, can religion be said to have begun. When 
the individual first consciously, and more or less recogniz- 
ingly, looks into the face of the universal, he from that 
moment becomes a religious being. 

I do not anywhere mean to set up or side with any definite 
theory as to the nature of the first worship of man. Such 
undertakings belong to the realm of the random guess-work 
before alluded to. The question is not here touched 
whether it was nature worship, fetichism, animism, poly- 
theism, monotheism, or what not. On any of these bases, 
the view here developed holds valid. Unless man in primi- 
tive times possessed a psychological nature entirely different 
in kind, the origin of his religious expression cannot have 
been other than that which is here attempted to be ex- 



RECONSIDERATION AND CONCLUSIONS 6 1 

plained. Human mind being in kind what we know it, — 
be its degree of power ever so low, — religious development 
must have come about in this order of psychical function. 

This relationship and kinship with the heart of nature 
once having been perceived, it may grow into ever clearer 
and more definite consciousness. The way in which it may 
be conceived and the forms which the conception may take, 
are as numerous as the possible relations between us and 
nature. Hence comes again, in a more fundamental way, 
the explanation of the cause of so many and so widely diver- 
gent theories about the source and nature of the religious 
impulse. Numerically as many theories are possible as the 
human spirit has modes of manifesting its relationship to the 
universal. If they have not been called forth, it is because 
they have not yet been clearly perceived by some live spirit 
with narrow vision. 

On the special question concerning the firmness with 
which this tendency is rooted in human nature, but few 
additional words are necessary. Either religion is a tran- 
sient stage belonging to man in lower degrees of intelligence, 
or it has its basis in some fundamental feature of intelligence 
itself. One need not possess a great power of prescience to 
see that it must be only a transitory attitude of mind, if it 
has its seat in mere blind feelings of fear, need, dependence, 
etc. ; for as soon as men cease to have these feelings (and 
nothing is more certain than that increasing knowledge of 
nature and command of natural resources are destroying 
them) they must necessarily cease to be religiously inclined. 
But, if we have understood the facts aright, the basis of relig- 
ion lies in the possibility and actuality of the human con- 
sciousness turning in contemplation toward that great Nature 
from which it sprang; and so long as it necessarily holds 
such an attitude, sees something to rivet its attention, finds 
something to draw forth its powers to new and continued 
energies, beholds mysteries yet uncomprehended and rela- 
tionships to nature yet unfulfilled, so long and so secure is 
this idea certain to remain an all-controlling one, — the more 



62 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

SO in proportion as man becomes a reflecting being, because 
with this the idea grows more and more comprehensive in 
content. Moreover, with the development of mind, it ceases 
to be limited to one or two notions, and comes finally to take 
in the whole of life. Every act of every capacity comes to 
be performed under devotion to divine (Nature's) laws, and 
only when the whole being is unfolded and symmetrically de- 
veloped to the utmost of its opportunity and capacity can 
the soul rest. The opinions (creeds) which this religious 
life holds and the ways (cultus) in which it expresses itself 
will vary and change from age to age as intelligence in- 
creases ; nor can nor should it be otherwise. Yet the study 
of history forces upon us the sad reflection that, from lack 
of breadth of outlook and its accompanying hope and charity, 
the views and conduct of the present and the approaching 
will not infrequently be regarded by the past and the pass- 
ing as having lost the essentials of faith and as plunging 
headlong into irreligion. 



Of such character and permanence, it is believed, is the 
primary element common to all forms of religion. In the 
previous remarks is also contained a hint of the effort which 
it is the object of all religion to. realize. In such consists 
its universal elements ; from these it branches in myriad rays. 
With additions and variations, we meet it in a thousand 
forms ; but covertly or overtly there is ever present this first 
conscious perception of a Life that is greater than " I " and 
of a possibility that is fuller than the present living actuality. 
Then come an emotional yearning for the realization and 
experience of that higher state, a volitional activity in the 
direction of its realization, and an aiming at its expres- 
sion and manifestation. Speaking comprehensively, it is 
life consciously seeking to realize itself. It is not difficult 
to detect in the basest forms the germ of this which in its 
highest expression is so sublime. Nor since the human 
became human has it ceased to have abundant utterance. 



RECONSIDERATION AND CONCLUSIONS 63 

The deep spirits of the race, always perceiving this, have 
added catholicity to their insight and replaced fretful anxiety 
by trust. Looking out upon the world in such discernment, 
with such a confidence and such a charity, Augustine said : 
" Res ipsa quae nunc religio Christiana nuncupatur, erat 
apud antiques, nee defuit ab initio generis humani quousque 
Christus veniret in carnem ; unde vera religio, quae jam erat, 
coepit Christiana appellari." 23 



NOTES. 



{Page 8.) 
1 See his excellent article, " The Religious Value of the Unknow- 
able," in the work entitled " The Nature and Reality of Religion : A 
Controversy between Frederic Harrison and Herbert Spencer." New 

York, 1885. 

{Page 8.) 
2 A. M. Fairbairn, "Religion in History." London, 1884. 

{Page 9.) 
^I take pleasure in citing one of the few exceptions to this quite 
universal attitude and dearth of broad religious study before our times. 
The Persian Emperor Akbar (i 542-1605) rose above the confusion and 
divisions of his day to what we would now term a comparative study 
of the religions of the world. He was, perhaps, the first to perceive a 
deeper meaning and a worthier object of interest than their outward 
forms, ceremonies, special doctrines, and names. Mohammedans, Jews, 
Christians, Brahmans, and Zoroastrians were invited to his court. He 
kept in employ phUologians, whose work was the translating of all the 
sacred books of other peoples to which he could get access ; and expe- 
rienced readers read to him daily from foreign literatures. See an 
extended account of the investigations and discussions of this remark- 
able man in Abulfazl's "Ain i Akbari," translated by Blochmann, and 
also extracts from the same in Max Miiller's " Introduction to the 
Science of Religion." London, 1873. App. to Lect. I. 

{Page 9.) 
* Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-du-Perron, later a celebrated Orien- 
tahst, returned to Paris in 1762 with Persian and Hindu literary treasures 
to the number of one hundred and eighty manuscripts, besides other 
rarities which he had gathered in India under the greatest difficulties. 
In 1 77 1, he published at Paris a French translation of the Avesta from 
the Zend. This was the first knowledge Europe had of Eastern sacred 
treasures. A beginning was made in Sanskrit literature by Sir William 
Jones's translation of " Sacontala ; or. The Fatal Ring," an Indian 
drama translated from the original Sanskrit and Pracrit. Calcutta, 1789. 

{Page II.) 
^ But, it may be asked, If we are justified at the present stage of the 
investigation in asking for the psychological origin of religion, why may 
we not also try and expect to reach a true solution of the nature of it } 



NOTES 65 

To this, it must be replied, We may so far as we have the data ; but 
the data for the one are by no means the data for the other. Whoever 
has studied this tendency as it has been manifested among various 
peoples must have discovered that theories drawn from one species do 
not always fit when applied to others. No great feature of human life 
is such a monotony in its actual realization as to be limited to one or 
two characteristics nor to be exhausted in any single people. To illus- 
trate by analogy: we know enough about language and languages to 
undertake, and doubtless discover, its psychological origin; but who 
would dare assume, in face of the yet unsolved riddles of linguistic 
relationships and the numerous unknown or imperfectly known tongues, 
to expound and explain the nature, manifestations, characteristics, and 
many-sided functions of language ? Not more are we in position to do 
in the field of religion. 

In the name of true science, then, it must be insisted that any genuine 
and faithful philosophical study of religion depends absolutely on the 
completeness and thoroughness of the historico-ethnical study which 
has preceded it. All other so-called " philosophy of religion " is but a 
larger or smaller accumulation of speculations and fancies, having no 
more certainty of truth than guesses generally do. Such "philosophies " 
may be to some extent philosophies of the thinker's own faith or that 
of his sect, but they have not the slightest claim as explanations of 
others' faiths or of the subject as a whole. 

iPaf:e 15.) 

6 It is not necessary for the purposes of this essay to further sub- 
divide the mental functions, yet a remark by way of a note may help 
to insure clearness. It will be observed that what we term mmd is here 
regarded as manifesting at bottom two tendencies, — an impelling or 
impulsive and a comprehending or cognitive. These operate combinedly 
in all mental functioning. Thus will is a compound of impulse and 
consciousness, forming what we sometimes term attention ; i.e., con- 
sciousness impelled toward a definite object or end. So, too, with all 
intellection there goes this fundamental impellent inducing spontaneity. 

Feeling is an inseparable condition of all consciousness. Simple 
feeling is a cognitive act. What are usually set down as the " emotions 
or feelings " are but the greater or less intensiveness of the intellectual 
or cognitive consciousness, and are named according to the object upon 
which the recognition is fixed. Sensation, a phenomenon of the senses, 
is to be carefully distinguished from feeling, meaning emotion. Through 
the senses and idea-izing power, objects or thoughts are brought before 
the consciousness. They produce a certain impression or state. If the 
object be retained in attention, this state is heightened, intensified, 
''flooded with emotion," we are accustomed to say. (It must be 
remarked, in passing, that this heightening has its limits, after which the 



66 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

specific emotion is lost entirely, and its opposite condition sets in, as 
experiments have shown.) In this way may be explained all the varieties 
and grades of emotions. Feeling is often spoken of as in some way 
a conscious faculty of mind ; but, in such cases, the notion is always 
confused and mixed up with cognitive function. Feeling, apart from 
cognition, or, rather, without cognition as its substance, would be blind, 
vacant, without content. It has no meaning apart from an act of the 
knowing faculty. The so-called higher feeling or superior faculty made 
so much of in all mystic philosophies is simply the intensified and exclu- 
sive use (so far as maybe) of what is sometimes called ** reason"; i.e., 
the synthetic operation of intellect. 

{Page i6.) 

'^ To be treated scientifically, religion, like every other human expres- 
sion, should be investigated historically, ethnologically, and philosophi- 
cally ; in other words, in terms of time, of space, and of inmost nature 
or essence, the two former being the indispensable preparation for the 
latter. Inasmuch as there is virtually no history obtainable, in the con- 
tinuous chronological sense, for most of the peoples of the world, the 
historical and the ethnological study must go hand in hand. 

The first requisite, then, is to obtain through ethnology a general 
notion of the races of men and of their various leading branches, past 
and present. Each special people, developed in comparative indepen- 
dence, among other products have produced a religion peculiar to them- 
selves and their circumstances. They therefore form so many leading 
subjects of historico-ethnical inquiry, under each of which many ques- 
tions are to be asked ; and from the multitude of answers returned may 
be undertaken the building up of the body or superstructure of a genuine 
science of religion. The following outline of topics contains some of 
the many inquiries to be made in the study of each special religion : — 

OUTLINE OF INQUIRIES FOR A HISTORICO-ETHNICAL 
STUDY OF RELIGIONS. 

I. Preliminary Questions: 

1. The Racial Relations of the Special People. 

2. Their Relative Position in History and the Principal Great 

Events in their Career. 

3. Their Residence and Physical Surroundings : — 

Climate, — cold, hot, moderate, and stimulating. 
Land-surface, — mountainous, level, plateau, desert. 
Water, — rivers, lakes, seas, archipelago. 
Flora, fauna, minerals. 

Striking natural phenomena, — storms, hurricanes, volca- 
noes, earthquakes. 



NOTES 67 

4. Their Stage of Development in General : — 

Material, — How do they live? (i) By hunting and fish- 
ing; (2) by herding and pasturing ; (3) by agriculture; 
(4) by agriculture, manufacture, and trade, — tools, 
weapons, shelter. 

Intellectual, — language, literature, art. 

Social, — family, government. 

Moral, — virtues and vices in their own regard, relations 
to surrounding nations. 

II. Source of their Religion : 

1. Founder or Founders, — chief circumstances of their lives. 

2. Relative Originality and Chief Sources of Influence. 

3. Sacred Literature, — divisions, general character, theoretic 

origin, actual origin. 

III. Their Conception of the Universe: 

1. Its Form or Shape. 

2. Its Nature or Substance. 

3. Its Origin or Creation. 

4. Their Theory of the Source of Evil. 

IV. Their Conceptions of Supernatural Beings, — i.e., their 

Theism : 
I. Names, Nature, and Functions of the Gods. Are they 

Simple, tangible, or visible objects, — stones, bones, shells, 
herbs, bits of wood, feathers, weapons, rocks, water, 
skins, animals, particular places; i.e., to what extent 
is fetichisni prevalent ? 

Semi-tangible or semi-visible objects, — mountains, rivers^ 
earth, fire, wind, rain, lightning ; i.e., to what extent 
does a lower jiahn^e worship prevail ? 

Intangible or invisible objects, — sky, sun, moon, stars, 
dawn, spirits of ancestors and of great men, spirits 
in and independent of objects, personified abstract 
conceptions of virtues, fates, etc. ? (These three 
characteristics are developed from a suggestion made 
by Max MuUer, Hib. Lect., 1878.) 

Or, from another point of view, are they: (i) living or 
departed human spirits ? (2) transformed human 
spirits ? or (3) natural forces and phenomena or 
imagined powers modelled on human spirits ? 

Whether the polytheism is of a miscellaneous, democratic, 
monarchical, or henotheistic conception .'' 



68 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

Whether a monotheistic conception is attained by indi- 
viduals or by the people at any time in their career? 
Whether they developed a philosophy ; and, if so, what 
it attained to, — dualism, spiritual monism, or mate- 
rialistic monism ? 
2. Character of the Gods, — power, wisdom, beneficence, malev- 
olence. (Only dualistic religions divide their deities into 
divine and demoniacal, and their future state into heaven 
and hell.) 

V. Their Conception of Man's Nature: 

1. His Origin. 

2. His Relation to Supernatural Beings. 

3. The Character of their Idea of Salvation (if any) ; i.e.^ from 

what to what? Is it only sensuously thought, or does 
it refer to some condition or state of mind to be avoided 
and some spiritual accomplishment to be aimed at, and, 
if the latter, what is the chief feature of the resulting 
mental development, — intellectual, moral, sympathetic, 
aesthetic, etc. ? 

4. Their Notion of a Future Life, — death, resurrection, region 

of the dead (immediately after death and their permanent 
abode, whether {a) in solitary gorges and valleys or on 
hill-tops where the living rarely go ; {b) on distant islands 
toward the setting sun ; (<:) in an under and shadowy 
realm below our world ; {d) among the stars or beyond 
them, in a heavenly kingdom for the good and a lower 
place of punishment or torment for the wicked; (e) a 
spiritual state out of spacial relations). 

VI. What Suggestion does their Environment offer toward 

Explaining their Theism and Eschatology? 
vii. cultus: 

1. Creeds, — character, and relation to the authority on which 

they assume to be based, how regarded ? 

2. Ceremonies, — prayers, offerings, sacrifices, assemblies, songs, 

dances, incantations, feasts, fasts. 

3. Ordinances having regard specially to individual life, — birth, 

circumcision, confirmation, baptism, marriage, anointing 
of the sick, burial, commemoration, canonization, excom- 
munication. 

4. Organizations : — 

Institutions, sects. 

Priesthood, — its orders, ordination, duties, standing, vest- 
ments. 



NOTES 69 

Shamans, — sorcerers, magicians, medicine men, miracle 
workers, prophets. 

5. Places of Worship, — temples, altars, sacred groves, hills, 

valleys ; sacred utensils. 

6. Symbolism, — geometric forms, monograms, paintings, figures. 

VIII. Moral Teachings (or Relation of the Religion to Practical 
Life, — virtues, vices). 

IX. Progressive or Dogmatic in Tendency: 

1. Direction and Strength of this. 

2. Heresies, — their nature {i.e., whether party reactions or 

growths of thought), their treatment by the dominant 
faith. 

X. The Central Idea of the Religion : 

1. In Theory. 

2. Its Greatest Emphasis in its Practical Carrying-out. 

3. Other Essential Ideas. 

XL Its Peculiar Contribution toward Showing the Scope 
OR Full Content of Religious Life. 

{Fag-e 25.) 

8 The term Will here, as well as those of Emotion (or Feeling) and 
Thought, as topics of later sections, are to be understood according to 
the old and general threefold partition of mental functions. The table 
given on a previous page shows the sense in which the writer regards it. 

{Pa£^e 27.) 
9" Religion ist (subjective betrachtet) das Erkenntniss aller unserer 
Pflichten als gottlicher Gebote." — Religion inner halb der Grenzen der 
blossen Vernunft, 2 Aufl., 1794, iv. i. 

{Page 27.) 
10 See his " Critique of the Practical Reason." Translated by E. K. 
Abbot. London, 1879. P- 256. 

{Page 28.) 
11" WeU indessen jede auf statutarischen Gesetzen errichtete Kirche 
nur sofern die wahre sein kann, als sie in sich ein Princip enthalt, sich 
dem reinen Vernunftglauben (als demjenigen, der, wenn er practisch ist, 
in jedem Glauben eigentlich die Religion ausmacht), besfandig zu nahern, 
und den Kirchenglauben (nach dem, was an ihm historisch ist), mit der 
Zeit entbehren zu konnen, so werden wir in diesen Gesetzen und an den 



yo HOW RELIGION ARISES 

Beamten der darauf gegriindeten Kirche doch einen Dienst (Cultus) der 
Kirche sofern setzen konnen, als diese ihre Lehren und Anordnung 
jederzeit auf jenen letzten Zweck (einen offentlichen Religionsglauben) 

richten." (1. c, p. 183.) 

{^Page 28.) 
i^Fichte reduced this to its consequences, just as he did Kant's 
theory of reaUty. He held, as above explained, that morality is all 
that is needed for life; that religion is impractical, not practical, and, 
when applied to conduct, conduct suffers. That society which uses it 
as a support to moral action is corrupt or low in the stage of humanity. 
Religion is useful as knowledge, to explain the deepest things, to give 
insight into our nature, and to reduce things to harmony. 

{Page 33.) 
1^ As stated in Note 8, I use the term " emotion " here strictly in the 
old or usual psychological meaning, as one of the three prime faculties 
of mind. It is seen from the analysis given in § 3 that the view here 
maintained leaves no possibility for either a purely or predominantly 
" emotional " religion, but that religions so designated find their pecul- 
iarity or distinctive character in the fact that they are the intensified and 
extravagant exercise of some single cognitive tendency. 

{Page 34.) 

i*"Es giebt keine Empfindung, die nicht fromm ware, ausser sie 
deute auf einen krankhaften verderbten Zustand des Lebens, der sich 
dann auch den anderen Gebieten mittheilen muss." — Ueber die Religion, 
3 Ausg., 1821, pp. 78 and 180, also 108. (First ed., 1799; new ed., 1879.) 

In a note on this passage written for this third edition, he says he 
has nothing to take back from the universality of the assertion. (1. c, 
p. 180.) 

From his " Christliche Glaubenslehre," Berlin, 1835, ^d. I. (i Ausg., 
1821-22 ; 5 Aufl., 1861, 2 Bde.), I cite the two following statements : — 

" Die Frommigkeit, welche die Basis aller kirchlichen Gemeinschaf- 
ten ausmacht, ist rein fiir sich betrachtet weder ein Wissen noch ein 
Thun, sondern eine Bestimmtheit des GefUhls oder des unmittelbaren 
Selbstbewusstseins." (p. 6, § 3.) (Cf. " Reden iiber die Religion," pp. 
56-77-) 

" Das gemeinsame aller noch so verschiedenen Aeusserungen der 
Frommigkeit, wodurch diese sich zugleich von alien anderen Gefiihlen 
unterscheiden, also das sich selbst gleiche Wesen der Frommigkeit ist 
dieses, dass wir uns unserer selbst als schlechthin abhangig, oder, was 
dasselbe sagen will, als in Beziehung mit Gott bewusst sind." (1. c, 
p. I5» § 4.) 

{Page 39-) 
1^ Schleiermacher, in his "Reden," asks his "cultured" reader who 
ascribes the origin of religion to fear, " Musst Ihr nicht gestehen, dass 



NOTES 7 I 

wenn es sich so verhielte, und die Frommigkeit mit der Furcht gekom- 
men ware, sie auch mit der Furcht wieder gehen miisste ? " (3 Aufl., 

p. 109.) 

{Page 40.) 
16 See his " First Principles," Part I.— " The Unknowable " ; also, 
" Principles of Sociology," Part I., various chapters. 

{Page 43.) 

1" Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, " Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza, in 
Briefen an Mendelssohn," 1785 (2 Ausg., 1789) ; "David Hume iiber den 
Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus," 1787; '* Von den gottlichen 
Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung," iSii (2 Ausg., 1822). His " Werke." 
6 Bde. Leipzig, 1812-24. 

Jacobi's stand-point has been called " emotion-philosophy " and 
"faith-philosophy." He wrote without the customary school terminol- 
ogy, more in the form of aphorism than demonstrative argument. He is 
no system maker. To him thought is too partial and limited for demon- 
stration. Its business is to see and connect facts. It sees them by im- 
mediate intuition or faith. This act of mind he never analyzed. If he 
had, he would have seen that his immediate knowledge, his belief, was 
not a simple act of mind, but rather a very complex process of thought. 

{Page 45.) 

18 See his " Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophie der Religion," etc. (in 
his "Werke," Bde. XL and XII., 1832); also, William Wallace, "The 
Logic of Hegel." (Prolegomena and translation.) 

{Page 46.) 

19 This is not the place to indulge in a discussion over Hegel's 
conclusions as to the nature, permanence, and place of religion. At 
another time, under the consideration of the parts played by various 
mental functions in making up the stibsta7ice of religion, his result may 
receive further attention. 

{Page 47 ) 
-"^ Causality— Peschel. — A theory of religion which seems at first 
to be founded on the facts in experience is that which bases itself in the 
requirement of a Cause for ourselves and for the world about us. One 
of the clearest expressions of this view was presented by Oscar Peschel. 
It is not the psychological analysis of a philosopher, but rather the 
induction of an ethnologist ; yet it is given with such philosophical 
reflections as to justify mention here. He says: "In all stages of 
civilization, among all races of mankind, religious emotions are always 
aroused by the same inward impulse, the necessity of discerning a cause 
or author for every phenomenon or event. . . . AU religious emotions 
proceed only from the desire for acquaintance with the Creator, and the 
worship of a deity is extinguished the instant that it ceases to satisfy the 



72 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

requirement of causality." (" The Races of Man and their Geographical 
Distribution." Translated. London, 1876. pp. 245 and 257.) This is 
a view which bespeaks a great degree of confidence in the reasoning 
tendency of man, — more, indeed, than would be generally ascribed to 
certain races low down in the human scale. The so-called savage has 
generally no definite notion of cause, yet no one now denies his religious 
manifestations. To his superstitious way of looking at things, the notion 
of magic, or the accomplishment of designs without adequate cause, is 
far more probable. But even this low idea, which it may be replied is 
a primitive notion of causality, is hardly a necessary conception for the 
first gleams of religious inclination. To the childish and primitive minds, 
the notion of cause, in any sense similar to what we mean by the term, 
has never been aroused. Things are taken for granted. There is no 
thought of their being brought about or manufactured. In Mrs. Stowe's 
*' Uncle Tom's Cabin," Topsy replies, in answer to the question who 
made her, "I 'specs I just growed." Peschel cites a case to show 
the remarkable strength of the idea of cause among heathen peoples; 
namely, we are told by a native Mexican historian (Ixtlilxochitl) that 
the renowned king, Tezcucos Netzahualcoyotzm, worshipped an unknown 
god, which he called the Cause of causes. (See W. H. Prescott, "Con- 
quest of Mexico," i. 194.) But, if this proves anything relevant to the 
question, it goes to show the rarity of this idea. So high a thought 
could never be at the foundation of the religious phenomena of peoples 
who are ages below it according to the ordinary rate of development. 
Indeed, both the history of religion and science go to show that the 
notion of a causally connected world of objects is one of the latest to be 
brought about. It implies the conception of unity in nature, which every 
scientist upon reflection knows to be foreign to the minds of men pre- 
vious to a certain high stage of culture. The difference between the 
perfection of this idea of causal connection in the savage and enlightened 
minds accounts for the bewildering and degrading polytheism of the one 
and the ennobling monotheism of the other. That the notion of cause 
is intimately connected with the religious idea from the time when man 
first begins to look for causes, I have no doubt; but that man was 
religious-minded before he was enough of a philosopher to think of 
such relations is indicated by the known facts of savage life, of child- 
hood, and by the psychological answer of what constitutes the earliest 

religious attitude. 

{Pag-e 50.) 

21 Robert Browning, "Bishop Blougram's Apology." (A philosoph- 
ical poem.) 

(Page 58.) 
^2 See his "Autobiography." London, 1873. 

(Page 63.) 
23 St. Augustine (Aurehus Augustinus), Retract. I., 13. 



ADDITIONAL REFERENCES. 



In addition to the chief authorities (which are cited in the Notes), 
I wish to express indebtedness for stimulation and valuable suggestion 
received from the following works also read, wholly or in considerable 
part, since this essay was begun : — 

Brinton, D. G. The Religious Sentiment. 

Caird, Edward. Hegel. 

Caird, John. The Philosophy of Religion. 

Candler, H. The Groundwork of Belief. 

Clarke, J. F. Ten Great Religions, I. (21st ed.) 

Clifford, W. K. Essays, II. (Ethics and Religion.) 

"Conflict in Nature and Life." (Anonymous.) 

Cook, Joseph. Boston Monday Lectures for 1884. 

Emerson, R. W. Essays, I. and II., also Lectures and Biographical 

Sketches. 
Everett, C. C. The Science of Thought. 

Fairbairn, A. M. Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History. 
Falckenberg, R. Geschichte der neueren Philosophic. 
Fiske, John. The Destiny of Man. 
James, William. Rationality, Activity, and Faith. (In Princeton 

Review.) 
Janet, Paul. Theory of Morals. (Translated from the French by 

Mary Chapman.) 
Matheson, G. Aids to the Study of German Theology. (2d ed.) 
Mill, J. S. Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism. 
Momerie, A. W. The Basis of Religion. 
Mueller, Max. Hibbert Lectures for 1878, and Introduction to the 

Science of Religion. 
Pfleiderer, Otto. Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtlicher Grundlage. 

(2 Aufl.) 
Puenjer, G. C. B. Grundriss der Religionsphilosophie. 
R6ville, A. Prolegomena to the History of Religion. (Translated 

from the French.) 
Royce, Josiah. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. 
Savage, M. J. Is a Science of Religion Possible.? (In Unitarian 

Review, June, 1885.) 



74 HOW RELIGION ARISES 

[Seeley, J. R.] Natural Religion. (2d ed.) 
Smyth, Newman. The Religious Feeling. 
Strauss, D. F. The Old and the New Faith. (Translated from the 

German.) 
Tide, C. P. The History of Religions. (Translated from the Dutch 

by J. E. Carpenter.) 
Ueberweg, Fr. History of Philosophy. (Translated by G. S. Morris.) 

Vol. II. 

Various books — too numerous to mention here — on the history 
of philosophy and of the different religions have also been used during 
this time in preparation of other work which the writer is doing within 
these fields. 




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